THE FAVORITE
SHORT STORIES
OF
W. Somerset Maugham

DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
Garden City, New York
1937

PRINTED AT THE Country Life Press, GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A.

COPYRIGHT, 1921, 1934
BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
COPYRIGHT, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1931, 1932
BY W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

Preface … v

Rain … 1

Red … 40

The Letter … 61

Before the Party … 94

The Outstation … 119

The Round Dozen … 148

The Hairless Mexican … 174

Giulia Lazzari …  209

Mr. Harrington’s Washing … 244

The Human Element … 281

The Alien Corn … 315

The Vessel of Wrath … 353

The Door of Opportunity … 389

Neil MacAdam … 421

PREFACE

THIS book contains fourteen stories. They are all about the same length and on the same scale. Though in early youth I had written a number of short stories, for many years, twelve or fifteen at least, occupied with the drama, I had ceased to do so; and when a journey to the South Seas unexpectedly provided me with themes that seemed to suit this medium, it was as a beginner of over forty that I wrote the story which is now called Rain. Since it caused some little stir the reader of this preface will perhaps have patience with me if I transcribe the working notes, made at the time, on which it was constructed. They are written in hackneyed and slipshod phrases, without grace; for nature has not endowed me with the happy gift of hitting instinctively upon the perfect word to indicate an object and the unusual but apt adjective to describe it. I was travelling from Honolulu to Pago Pago and, hoping they might at some time be of service, I jotted down as usual my impressions of such of my fellow-passengers as attracted my attention. This is what I said of Miss Thompson: “Plump, pretty in a coarse fashion, perhaps not more than twenty-seven. She wore a white dress and a large white hat, long white boots from which the calves bulged in cotton stockings.” There had been a raid on the Red Light district in Honolulu just before we sailed and the gossip of the ship spread the report that she was making the journey to escape arrest. My notes go on: “W. The Missionary. He was a tall thin man, with long limbs loosely jointed, he had hollow cheeks and high cheek bones, his fine., large, dark eyes were deep in their sockets, he had full sensual lips, he wore his hair rather long. He had a cadaverous air and a look of suppressed fire. His hands were large, with long fingers, rather finely shaped. His naturally pale skin was deeply burned by the tropical sun. Mrs. W. His Wife. She was a little woman with her hair very elaborately done, New England; not prominent blue eyes behind gold-rimmed pince-nez, her face was long like a sheep's, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness. She had the quick movements of a bird. The most noticeable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the ceaseless clamour of a pneumatic drill. She was dressed in black and wore round her neck a gold chain from which hung a small cross. She told me that W. was a missionary on the Gilberts and his district consisting of widely separated islands he frequently had to go distances by canoe. During this time she remained at headquarters and managed the mission. Often the seas were very rough and the journeys were not without peril. He was a medical missionary. She spoke of the depravity of the natives in a voice which nothing could hush, but with a vehement, unctuous horror, telling me of their marriage customs which were obscene beyond description. She said, when first they went it was impossible to find a single good girl in any of the villages. She inveighed against dancing. I talked with the missionary and his wife but once, and with Miss Thompson not at all. Here is the note for the story: “A prostitute, flying from Honolulu after a raid, lands at Pago Pago. There lands there also a missionary and his wife. Also the narrator. All are obliged to stay there owing to an outbreak of measles. The missionary finding out her profession persecutes her. He reduces her to misery, shame, and repentance, he has no mercy on her. He induces the governor to order her return to Honolulu. One morning he is found with his throat cut by his own hand and she is once more radiant and self-possessed. She looks at men and scornfully exclaims: dirty pigs.”

An intelligent critic, who combines wide reading and a sensitive taste with a knowledge of the world rare among those who follow his calling, has found in my stories the influence of Guy de Maupassant. That is not strange. When I was a boy he was considered the best short story writer in France and I read his works with avidity. From the age of fifteen whenever I went to Paris I spent most of my afternoons poring over the books in the galleries of the Odéon. I have never passed more enchanted hours. The attendants in their long smocks were indifferent to the people who sauntered about looking at the books and they would let you read for hours without bothering. There was a shelf filled with the works of Guy de Maupassant, but they cost three francs fifty a volume and that was not a sum I was prepared to spend. I had to read as best I could standing up and peering between the uncut pages. Sometimes when no attendant was looking I would hastily cut a page and thus read more conveniently. Fortunately some of them were issued in a cheap edition at seventy-five centimes and I seldom came away without one of these. In this manner, before I was eighteen, I had read all the best stories. It is natural enough that when at that age I began writing stories myself I should unconsciously have chosen those little masterpieces as a model. I might very well have hit upon a worse.

Maupassant’s reputation does not stand as high as it did, and it is evident now that there is much in his work to repel. He was a Frenchman of his period in violent reaction against the romantic age which was finishing in the saccharine sentimentality of Octave Feuillet (admired by Matthew Arnold) and in the impetuous slop of George Sand. He was a naturalist, aiming at truth at all costs, but the truth he achieved looks to us now a trifle superficial. He does not analyse his characters. He takes little interest in the reason why. They act, but wherefore he does not know. “For me,” he says, “psychology in a novel or in a story consists in this: to show the inner man by his life.” That is very well, that is what we all try to do, but the gesture will not by itself always indicate the motive. The result with Maupassant was a simplification of character which is effective enough in a short story, but on reflection leaves you unconvinced. There is more in men than that, you say. Again, he was obsessed by the tiresome notion, common then to his countrymen, that it was a duty a man owed himself to hop into bed with every woman under forty that he met. His characters indulge their sexual desire to gratify their self-esteem. They are like the people who eat caviare when they are not hungry because it is expensive. Perhaps the only human emotion that affects his characters with passion is avarice. This he can understand; it fills him with horror, but notwithstanding he has a sneaking sympathy with it. He was slightly common. But for all this it would be foolish to deny his excellence. An author has the right to be judged by his best work. No author is perfect. You must accept his defects; they are often the necessary complement of his merits; and this may be said in gratitude to posterity that it is very willing to do this. It takes what is good in a writer and is not troubled by what is bad. It goes so far sometimes, to the confusion of the candid reader, as to claim a profound significance for obvious faults. So you will see the critics (the awe-inspiring voice of posterity) find subtle reasons to explain to his credit something in a play of Shakespeare’s that any dramatist could tell them needed no other explanation than haste, indifference or wilfulness. Maupassant’s stories are good stories. The anecdote is interesting apart from the narration so that it would secure attention if it were told over the dinner-table; and that seems to me a very great merit indeed. However halting your words and insipid your rendering, you could not fail to interest your listeners if you told them the bare story of Boule de Suif, L’Héritage or La Parure. These stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. They do not wander along an uncertain line so that you cannot see whither they are leading, but follow without hesitation, from exposition to climax, a bold and vigorous curve. It may be that they have no great spiritual significance. Maupassant did not aim at that. He looked upon himself as a plain man; no good writer was ever less a man of letters. He did not pretend to be a philosopher, and here he was well-advised, for when he indulges in reflection he is commonplace. But within his limits he is admirable. He has an astonishing capacity for creating living people. He can afford little space, but in a few pages can set before you half a dozen persons so sharply seen and vividly described that you know all about them that you need. Their outline is clear; they are distinguishable from one another; and they breathe the breath of life. They have no complexity, they lack strangely the indecision, the unexpectedness, the mystery that we see in human beings; they are in fact simplified for the purposes of the story. But they are not deliberately simplified: those keen eyes of his saw clearly, but they did not see profoundly; it is a happy chance that they saw all that was necessary for him to achieve the aim he had in view. He treats the surroundings in the same way, he sets his scene accurately, briefly and effectively; but whether he is describing the charming landscape of Normandy or the stuffy, overcrowded drawing-rooms of the eighties his object is the same, to get on with the story. On his own lines I do not think that Maupassant is likely to be surpassed. If his excellence is not at the moment so apparent it is because what he wrote must now stand comparison with the very different, more subtle and moving work of Chekov.

No one’s stock to-day stands higher with the best critics than Chekov’s. In fact he has put every other story-teller’s nose out of joint. To admire him is a proof of good taste; not to like him is to declare yourself a philistine. His stories are the models that young writers naturally take. This is understandable. On the face of it it is easier to write stories like Chekov’s than stories like Maupassant’s. To invent a story interesting in itself apart from the telling is a difficult thing, the power to do it is a gift of nature, it cannot be acquired by taking thought, and it is a gift that very few people have. Chekov had many gifts, but not this one. If you try to tell one of his stories you will find that there is nothing to tell. The anecdote, stripped of its trimmings, is insignificant and often inane. It was grand for people who wanted to write a story and couldn’t think of a plot to discover that you could very well manage without one. If you could take two or three persons, describe their mutual relations and leave it at that, why then it wasn’t so hard to write a story; and if you could flatter yourself that this really was art, what could be more charming?

But I am not quite sure that it is wise to found a technique on a writer’s defects. I have little doubt that Chekov would have written stories with an ingenious, original and striking plot if he had been able to think of them. It was not in his temperament. Like all good writers he made a merit of his limitations. Was it not Goethe who said that an artist only achieves greatness when he recognises them? If a short story is a piece of prose dealing with more or less imaginary persons no one wrote better short stories than Chekov. If, however, as some think, it should be the representation of an action, complete in itself and of a certain limited length, he leaves something to be desired. He put his own idea clearly enough in these words: “Why write about a man getting into a submarine and going to the North Pole to reconcile himself to the world, while his beloved at that moment throws herself with a hysterical shriek from the belfry? All this is untrue and does not happen in real life. One must write about simple things: how Peter Semionovitch married Maria Ivanovna. That is all.” But there is no reason why a writer should not make a story of an unusual incident. The fact that something happens every day does not make it more important. The pleasure of recognition, which is the pleasure thus aimed at, is the lowest of the aesthetic pleasures. It is not a merit in a story that it is un-dramatic. Maupassant chose very ordinary people and sought to show what there was of drama in the common happenings of their lives. He chose the significant incident and extracted from it all the drama possible. It is a method as praiseworthy as another; it tends to make a story more absorbing. Probability is not the only test; and probability is a constantly changing thing. At one time it was accepted that the “call of the blood” should enable long-lost children to recognize their parents and that a woman only had to get into men’s clothes to pass as a man. Probability is what you can get the readers of your time to swallow. Nor did Chekov, notwithstanding his principles, adhere to his canon unless it suited him. Take one of the most beautiful and touching of his stories, The Bishop. It describes the approach of death with great tenderness, but there is no reason for the Bishop to die, and a better technician would have made the cause of death an integral part of the story. “Everything that has no relation to the story must be ruthlessly thrown away,” he says in his advice to Schoukin. “If in the first chapter you say that a gun hung on the wall, in the second or third chapter it must without fail be discharged.” So when the Bishop eats some tainted fish and a few days later dies of typhoid we may suppose that it was the tainted fish that killed him. If that is so he did not die of typhoid, but of ptomaine poisoning, and the symptoms were not as described. But of course Chekov did not care. He was determined that his good and gentle bishop should die and for his own purposes he wanted him to die in a particular way. I do not understand the people who say of Chekov’s stories that they are slices of life, I do not understand, that is, if they mean that they offer a true and typical picture of life. I do not believe they do that, nor do I believe they ever did. I think they are marvellously lifelike, owing to the writer’s peculiar talent, but I think they are deliberately chosen to square with the prepossessions of a sick, sad and overworked, gray-minded man. I do not blame them for that. Every writer sees the world in his own way and gives you his own picture of it. The imitation of life is not a reasonable aim of art; it is a discipline to which the artist from time to time subjects himself when the stylization of life has reached an extravagance that outrages common sense. For Chekov life is like a game of billiards in which you never pot the red, bring off a losing hazard or make a cannon, and should you by a miraculous chance get a fluke you will almost certainly cut the cloth. He sighs sadly because the futile do not succeed, the idle do not work, liars do not speak the truth, drunkards are not sober and the ignorant have no culture. I suppose that it is this attitude that makes his chief characters somewhat indistinct. He can give you a striking portrait of a man in two lines, as much as can be said of anyone in two lines to set before you a living person, but with elaboration he seems to lose his grasp of the individual. His men are shadowy creatures, with vague impulses to good, but without will-power, shiftless, untruthful, fond of fine words, often with great ideals, but with no power of action. His women are lachrymose, slatternly and feeble-minded. Though they think it a «in they will commit fornication with anyone who asks them, not because they have passion, not even because they want to, but because it is too much trouble to refuse. It is only in his description of young girls that he seems touched with a tender indulgence. “Alas! regardless of their doom, the little victims play.” He is moved by their charm, the gaiety of their laughter, their ingenuousness and their vitality; but it all leads to nothing. They make no effort to conquer their happiness, but yield passively to the first obstacle in the way.

But if I have ventured to make these observations I beg the reader not to think that I have anything but a very great admiration for Chekov. No writer, I repeat, is faultless. It is well to admire him for his merits. Not to recognize his imperfections, but rather to insist that they are excellencies, can in the long run only hurt his reputation. Chekov is extremely readable. That is a writer’s supreme virtue and one upon which sufficient stress is often not laid. He shared it with Maupassant. Both of them were professional writers who turned out stories at more or less regular intervals to earn their living. They wrote as a doctor visits his patients or a solicitor sees his clients. It was part of the day’s work. They had to please their readers. They were not always inspired, it was only now and then that they produced a masterpiece, but it is very seldom that they wrote anything that did not hold the reader’s attention to the last line. They both wrote for papers and magazines. Sometimes a critic will describe a book of short stories as magazine stories and thus in his own mind damn them. That is foolish. No form of art is produced unless there is a demand for it and if newspapers and magazines did not publish short stories they would not be written. All stories are magazine stories or newspaper stories. The writers must accept certain (but constantly changing) conditions; it has never been known yet that a good writer was unable to write his best owing to the conditions under which alone he could gain a public for his work. That has never been anything but an excuse of the second-rate. I suspect that Chekov’s great merit of concision is due to the fact that the newspapers for which he habitually wrote could only give him a certain amount of space. He said that stories should have neither a beginning nor an end. He could not have meant that literally. You might as well ask of a fish that it should have neither head nor tail. It would not be a fish if it hadn’t. The way Chekov in reality begins a story is wonderfully good. He gives the facts at once, in a few lines; he has an unerring feeling for the essential statements, and he sets them down baldly, but with great precision, so that you know at once whom you have to deal with and what the circumstances are. Maupassant often started his stories with an introduction designed to put the reader in a certain frame of mind. It is a dangerous method only justified by success. It may be dull. It may throw the reader off the scent; you have won his interest in certain characters and then instead of being told what you would like to know about them, your interest is claimed for other people in other circumstances. Chekov preached compactness. In his longer stories he did not always achieve it. He was distressed by the charge brought against him that he was indifferent to moral and sociological questions and when he had ample space at his command he seized the opportunity to show that they meant as much to him as to any other right-thinking person. Then in long and somewhat tedious conversations he would make his characters express his own conviction that, whatever the conditions of things might be then, at some not far distant date (say 1984) the Russians would be free, tyranny would exist no longer, the poor would hunger no more and happiness, peace and brotherly love rule in the vast empire. But these were aberrations forced upon him by the pressure of opinion (common in all countries) that the writer of fiction should be a prophet, a social reformer and a philosopher. In his shorter stories Chekov attained the concision he aimed at in a manner that is almost miraculous.

And no one had a greater gift than he for giving you the intimate feeling of a place, a landscape, a conversation or (within his limited range) a character. I suppose this is what people mean by the vague word atmosphere. Chekov seems to have achieved it very simply, without elaborate explanation or long description, by a precise narration of facts; and I think it was due with him to a power of seeing things with amazing naivety. The Russians -are a semi-barbarous people and they seem to have retained the power of seeing things naturally, as though they existed in a vacuum; while we in the West, with our complicated culture behind us, see things with the associations they have gathered during long centuries of civilization. They almost seem to see the thing in itself. Most writers, especially those living abroad, have in the last few years been shown numbers of stories by Russian refugees who vainly hope to earn a few guineas by placing them somewhere. Though dealing with the present day they might very well be stories by Chekov not at his best; they all have that direct, sincere vision. It is a national gift. In no one was it more acutely developed than in Chekov.

But I have not yet pointed out what to my mind is Chekov’s greatest merit. Since I am not a critic and do not know the proper critical expressions I am obliged to describe this as best I can in terms of my own feeling. Chekov had an amazing power of surrounding people with air so that, though he does not put them before you in the round and they lack the coarse, often brutal vitality of Maupassant’s figures, they live with a strange and unearthly life. They are not lit by the hard light of common day but suffused in a mysterious grayness. They move in this as though they were disembodied spirits. It is their souls that you seem to see. The subconscious seems to come to the surface and they communicate with one another directly without the impediment of speech. Strange, futile creatures, with descriptions of their outward seeming tacked on them like a card on an exhibit in a museum, they move as mysteriously as the tortured souls who crowded about Dante when he walked in Hell. You have the feeling of a vast, gray, lost throng wandering aimless in some dim underworld. It fills you with awe and with uneasiness. I have hinted that Chekov had no great talent for inventing a multiplicity of persons. Under different names, with different environment, the same characters recur. It is as though, when you looked at the soul, the superficial difference vanishes and everyone is more or less the same. His people seem strangely to slip into one another as though they were not distinct individuals, but temporary fictions. and as though in truth they were all part of one another. The importance of a writer in the long run rests on his uniqueness. I do not know that anyone but Chekov has so poignantly been able to represent spirit communing with spirit. It is this that makes one feel that Maupassant in comparison is obvious and vulgar. The strange, the terrible thing is that, looking at man in their different ways, these two great writers, Maupassant and Chekov, saw eye to eye. One was content to look upon the flesh, the other, more nobly and subtly, surveyed the spirit; but they agreed that life was tedious and insignificant and that men were base, unintelligent and pitiful.

I hope the reader will not be impatient with me because in an introduction to my own stories I have dwelt at length on these remarkable writers. Maupassant and Chekov are the two authors of short stories whose influence survives to the present day and all of us who cultivate the medium must in the end be judged by the standards they have set.

So far as I could remember it I have placed the stories in this volume in the order in which they were written. I thought it might possibly interest the reader to see how I had progressed from the tentativeness of the first ones, when I was very much at the mercy of my anecdote, to the relative certainty of the later ones when I had learnt so to arrange my material as to attain the result I wanted. Though all but two have been published in a magazine these stories were not written with that end in view. When I began to write them I was fortunately in a position of decent independence and I wrote them as a relief from work which I thought I had been too long concerned with. It is often said that stories are no better than they are because the editors of magazines insist on their being written to a certain pattern. This has not been my experience.

Several were published in the Cosmopolitan Magazine and Ray Long, the Editor, never put pressure on me to write other than as I wished. Sometimes the stories were cut and this is reasonable since no editor can afford one contributor more than a certain amount of space; but I was never asked to make the smallest alteration to suit what might be supposed to be the taste of the readers. Ray Long paid me for them not only with good money, but with generous appreciation. I did not value this less. We authors are simple, childish creatures and we treasure a word of praise from those who buy our wares. Most of them were written in groups from notes made as they occurred to me, and in each group I left naturally enough to the last those that seemed most difficult to write. A story is difficult to write when you do not know all about it from the beginning, but for part, of it must trust to your imagination and experience. Sometimes the curve does not intuitively present itself and you have to resort to this method and that to get the appropriate line.

I beg the reader not to be deceived by the fact that a good many of these stories are told in the first person into thinking that they are experiences of my own. This is merely a device to gain verisimilitude. It is one that has its defects, for it may strike the reader that the narrator could not know all the events he sets forth; and when he tells a story in the first person at one remove, when he reports, I mean, a story that someone tells him, it may very well seem that the speaker, a police officer, for example, or a sea-captain, could never have expressed himself with such facility and with such elaboration. Every convention has its disadvantages. These must be as far as possible disguised and what cannot be disguised must be accepted. The advantage of this one is its directness. It makes it possible for the writer to tell no more than he knows. Making no claim to omniscience, he can frankly say when a motive or an occurrence is unknown to him, and thus often give his story a plausibility that it might otherwise lack. It tends also to put the reader on intimate terms with the author. Since Maupassant and Chekov, who tried so hard to be objective, nevertheless are so nakedly personal, it has sometimes seemed to me that if the author can in no way keep himself out of his work it might be better if he put in as much of himself as possible. The danger is that he may put in too much and thus be as boring as a talker who insists on monopolizing the conversation. Like all conventions this one must be used with discretion. The reader may have observed that in the original note of Rain the narrator was introduced, but in the story as written omitted.

Three of the stories in this volume were told me and I had nothing to do but make them probable, coherent and dramatic. The rest were invented, as I have shown Rain was, by the accident of my happening upon persons here and there, who in themselves or from something I heard about them suggested a theme that seemed suitable for a short story. This brings me to a topic that has always concerned writers and that has at times given the public, the writer’s raw material, some uneasiness. There are authors who state that they never have a living model in mind when they create a character. I think they are mistaken. They are of this opinion because they have not scrutinized with sufficient care the recollections and impressions upon which they have constructed the person who, they fondly imagine, is of their invention. If they did they would discover that, unless he was taken from some book they had read, a practise by no means uncommon, he was suggested by one or more persons they had at one time known or seen. The great writers of the past made no secret of the fact that their characters were founded on living people. We know that the good Sir Walter Scott, a man of the highest principles, portrayed his father, with sharpness first and then, when the passage of years had changed his temper, with tolerance; Henri Beyle, in the manuscript of at least one of his novels, has written in at the side the names of the real persons who were his models; and this is what Turgenev himself says: “For my part, I ought to confess that I never attempted to create a type without having, not an idea, but a living person, in whom the various elements were harmonized together, to work from. I have always needed some groundwork on which I could tread firmly.” With Flaubert it is the same story; that Dickens used his friends and relations freely is notorious; and if you read the Journal of Jules Renard, a most instructive book to anyone who wishes to know how a writer works, you will see the care with which he set down every little detail about the habits, ways of speech and appearance of the persons he knew. When he came to write a novel he made use of this storehouse of carefully collected information. In Chekov’s diary you will find notes which were obviously made for use at some future time, and in the recollections of his friends there are frequent references to the persons who were the originals of certain of his characters. It looks as though the practice were very common. I should have said it was necessary and inevitable. Its convenience is obvious. You are much more likely to depict a character who is a recognizable human being, with his own individuality, if you have a living model. The imagination can create nothing out of the void. It needs the stimulus of sensation. The writer whose creative faculty has been moved by something peculiar in a person (peculiar perhaps only to the writer) falsifies his idea if he attempts to describe that person other than as he sees him. Character hangs together and if you try to throw people off the scent, by making a short man tall for example (as though stature had no effect on character) or by making him choleric when he has the concomitant traits of an equable temper, you will destroy the plausible harmony (to use the beautiful phrase of Baltasar Grecian) of which it consists. The whole affair would be plain sailing if it were not for the feelings of the persons concerned. The writer has to consider the vanity of the human race and the Schadenfreude which is one of its commonest and most detestable failings. A man’s friends will find pleasure in recognizing him in a book and though the author may never even have seen him will point out to him, especially if it is unflattering, what they consider his living image. Often someone will recognize a trait he knows in himself or a description of the place he lives in and in his conceit jumps to the conclusion that the character described is a portrait of himself. Thus in the story called The Outstation the Resident was suggested by a British Consul I had once known in Spain and it was written ten years after bis death, but I have heard that the Resident of a district in Sarawak, which I described in the story, was much affronted because he thought I had had him in mind. The two men had not a trait in common. I do not suppose any writer attempts to draw an exact portrait. Nothing, indeed, is so unwise as to put into a work of fiction a person drawn line by line from life. His values are all wrong, and, strangely enough, he does not make the other characters in the story seem false, but himself. He never convinces. That is why the many writers who have been attracted by the singular and powerful figure of the late Lord Northcliffe have never succeeded in presenting a credible personage. The model a writer chooses is seen through his own temperament and if he is a writer of any originality what he sees need have little relation with the facts. He may see a tall man short or a generous one avaricious; but, I repeat, if he sees him tall, tall he must remain. He takes only what he wants of the living man. He uses him as a peg on which to hang his own fancies. To achieve his end (the plausible harmony that nature so seldom provides) he gives him traits that the model does not possess. He makes him coherent and substantial. The created character, the result of imagination founded on fact, is art, and life in the raw, as we know, is of this only the material. The odd thing is that when the charge is made that an author has copied this person or the other from life, emphasis is laid only on his less praiseworthy characteristics. If you say of a character that he is kind to his mother, but beats his wife, everyone will cry: Ah, that’s Brown, how beastly to say he beats his wife; and no one thinks for a moment of Jones and Robinson who are notoriously kind to their mothers. I draw from this the somewhat surprising conclusion that we know our friends by their vices .and not by their virtues. I have stated that I never even spoke to Miss Thompson in Rain. This is a character that the world has not found wanting in vividness. Though but one of a multitude of writers my practise is doubtless common to most, so that I may be permitted to give another instance of it. I was once asked to meet at dinner two persons, a husband and wife, of whom I was told only what the reader will shortly read. I think I never knew their names. I should certainly not recognize them if I met them in the street. Here are the notes I made at the time. “A stout, rather pompous man of fifty, with pince-nez, grav-haired, a florid complexion, blue eyes, a neat gray moustache. He talks with assurance. He is resident of an outlying district and is somewhat impressed with the importance of his position. He despises the men who have let themselves go under the influence of the climate and the surroundings. He has travelled extensively during his short leaves in the East and knows Java, the Philippines, the coast of China and the Malay Peninsula. He is very British, very patriotic; he takes a great deal of exercise. He has been a very heavy drinker and always took a bottle of whiskey to bed with him. His wife has entirely cured him and now he drinks nothing but water. She is a little insignificant woman, with sharp features, thin, with a sallow skin and a flat chest. She is very badly dressed. She has all the prejudices of an Englishwoman. All her family for generations have been in second-rate regiments. Except that you know that she has caused her husband to cease drinking entirely you would think her quite colourless and unimportant.” On these materials I invented the story which is called Before the Party. I do not believe that any candid person could think that these two people had cause for complaint because they had been made use of. It is true that I should never have thought of the story if I had not met them, but anyone who takes the trouble to read it will see how insignificant was the incident (the taking of the bottle to bed) that suggested it and how differently the two chief characters have in the course of writing developed from the brief sketch which was their foundation.

“Critics are like horse-flies which prevent the horse from ploughing,” said Chekov. “For over twenty years I have read criticisms of my stories, and I do not remember a single remark of any value or one word of valuable advice. Only once Skabichevsky wrote something which made an impression on me. He said I would die in a ditch, drunk.” He was writing for twenty-five years and during that time his writing was constantly attacked. I do not know whether the critics of the present day are naturally of a less ferocious temper; I must allow that on the whole the judgment that has been passed on the stories in this volume when from time to time a collection has been published in book form has been favourable. One epithet, however, has been much applied to them, which has puzzled me; they have been described with disconcerting frequency as “competent.” Now on the face of it I might have thought this laudatory, for to do a thing competently is certainly more deserving of praise than to do it incompetently, but the adjective has been used in a disparaging sense and, anxious to learn and if possible to improve, I have asked myself what was in the mind of the critics who thus employed it. Of course none of us is liked by everybody and it is necessary- that a man’s writing, which is so intimate a revelation of himself, should be repulsive to persons who are naturally antagonistic to the creature he is. This should leave him unperturbed. But when an author’s work is somewhat commonly found to have a quality that is unattractive to many it is sensible of him to give the matter his attention. There is evidently something that a number of people do not like in my stories and it is this they try to express when they damn them with the faint praise of competence. I have a notion that it is the definiteness of their form. I hazard the suggestion (perhaps unduly flattering to myself) because this particular criticism has never been made in France where my stories have had with the critics and the public much greater success than they have had in England. The French, with their classical sense and their orderly minds, demand a precise form and are exasperated by a work in which the ends are left lying about, themes are propounded and not resolved and a climax is foreseen and then eluded. This precision on the other hand has always been slightly antipathetic to the English. Our great novels have been shapeless and this, far from disconcerting their readers, has given them a sense of security. This is the life we know, they have thought, with its arbitrariness and inconsequence; we can put out of our minds the irritating thought that two and two make four. If I am right in this surmise I can do nothing about it and I must resign myself to being called competent for the rest of my days. My prepossessions in the arts are on the side of law and order. I like a story that fits. I did not take to writing stories seriously till I had had much experience as a dramatist, and this experience taught me to leave out everything that did not serve the dramatic value of my story. It taught me to make incident follow incident in .such a manner as to lead up to the climax I had in mind. I am not unaware of the disadvantages of this method. It gives a tightness of effect that is sometimes disconcerting. You feel that life does not dovetail into its various parts with such neatness. In life stories straggle, they begin nowhere and tail off without a point. That is probably what Chekov meant when he said that stories should have neither a beginning nor an end. It is certain that sometimes it gives you a sensation of airlessness when you see persons who behave so exactly according to character, and incidents that fall into place with such perfect convenience. The story-teller of this kind aims not only at giving his own feelings about life, but at a formal decoration. He arranges life to suit his purposes. He follows a design in his mind, leaving out this and changing that; he distorts facts to his advantage, according to his plan; and when he attains his object produces a work of art. It may be that life slips through his fingers; then he has failed; it may be that he seems sometimes so artificial that you cannot believe him, and when you do not believe a story-teller he is done. When he succeeds he has forced you for a time to accept his view of the universe and has given you the pleasure of following out the pattern he has drawn on the surface of chaos. But he seeks to prove nothing. He paints a picture and sets it before you. You can take it or leave it.

The Favorite Short Stories of
W. Somerset Maugham

RAIN

IT WAS nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down quietly at Apia for twelve months at least, and he felt already better for the journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next day at Pago–Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very low, quiet voice.

Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there had arisen the intimacy of shipboard, which is due to propinquity rather than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval they shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the smoking-room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs Macphail was not a little flattered to think that she and her husband were the only people on board with whom the Davidsons were willing to associate, and even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the compliment. It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in their cabin at night he permitted himself to carp.

“Mrs Davidson was saying she didn’t know how they’d have got through the journey if it hadn’t been for us,” said Mrs Macphail as she neatly brushed out her transformation. “She said we were really the only people on the ship they cared to know.”

“I shouldn’t have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could afford to put on frills.”

“It’s not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn’t have been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking-room.”

“The founder of their religion wasn’t so exclusive,” said Dr Macphail with a chuckle.

“I’ve asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,” answered his wife. “I shouldn’t like to have a nature like yours, Alec. You never look for the best in people.”

He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled down to read himself to sleep.

When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at it with greedy eyes. There was a thin strip of silver beach rising quickly to hills covered to the top with luxuriant vegetation. The coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water’s edge, and among them you saw the grass houses of the Samoans; and here and there, gleaming white, a little church. Mrs Davidson came and stood beside him. She was dressed in black and wore round her neck a gold chain, from which dangled a small cross. She was a little woman, with brown, dull hair very elaborately arranged, and she had prominent blue eyes behind invisible pince-nez. Her face was long, like a sheep’s, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflexion; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of the pneumatic drill.

“This must seem like home to you,” said Dr Macphail, with his thin, difficult smile.

“Ours are low islands, you know, not like these. Coral. These are volcanic. We’ve got another ten days’ journey to reach them.”

“In these parts that’s almost like being in the next street at home,” said Dr Macphail facetiously.

“Well, that’s rather an exaggerated way of putting it, but one does look at distances differently in the South Seas. So far you’re right.”

Dr Macphail sighed faintly.

“I’m glad we’re not stationed here,” she went on. “They say this is a terribly difficult place to work in. The steamers’ touching makes the people unsettled; and then there’s the naval station; that’s bad for the natives. In our district we don’t have difficulties like that to contend with. There are one or two traders, of course, but we take care to make them behave, and if they don’t we make the place so hot for them they’re glad to go.”

Fixing the glasses on her nose she looked at the green island with a ruthless stare.

“It’s almost a hopeless task for the missionaries here. I can never be sufficiently thankful to God that we are at least spared that.”

Davidson’s district consisted of a group of islands to the North of Samoa; they were widely separated and he had frequently to go long distances by canoe. At these times his wife remained at their headquarters and managed the mission. Dr Macphail felt his heart sink when he considered the efficiency with which she certainly managed it. She spoke of the depravity of the natives in a voice which nothing could hush, but with a vehemently unctuous horror. Her sense of delicacy was singular. Early in their acquaintance she had said to him:

“You know, their marriage customs when we first settled in the islands were so shocking that I couldn’t possibly describe them to you. But I’ll tell Mrs Macphail and she’ll tell you.”

Then he had seen his wife and Mrs Davidson, their deck-chairs close together, in earnest conversation for about two hours. As he walked past them backwards and forwards for the sake of exercise, he had heard Mrs Davidson’s agitated whisper, like the distant flow of a mountain torrent, and he saw by his wife’s open mouth and pale face that she was enjoying an alarming experience. At night in their cabin she repeated to him with bated breath all she had heard.

“Well, what did I say to you?” cried Mrs Davidson, exultant next morning. “Did you ever hear anything more dreadful? You don’t wonder that I couldn’t tell you myself, do you? Even though you are a doctor.”

Mrs Davidson scanned his face. She had a dramatic eagerness to see that she had achieved the desired effect.

“Can you wonder that when we first went there our hearts sank? You’ll hardly believe me when I tell you it was impossible to find a single good girl in any of the villages.”

She used the word good in a severely technical manner.

“Mr Davidson and I talked it over, and we made up our minds the first thing to do was to put down the dancing. The natives were crazy about dancing.”

“I was not averse to it myself when I was a young man,” said Dr Macphail.

“I guessed as much when I heard you ask Mrs Macphail to have a turn with you last night. I don’t think there’s any real harm if a man dances with his wife, but I was relieved that she wouldn’t. Under the circumstances I thought it better that we should keep ourselves to ourselves.”

“Under what circumstances?”

Mrs Davidson gave him a quick look through her pince-nez, but did not answer his question.

“But among white people it’s not quite the same,” she went on, “though I must say I agree with Mr Davidson, who says he can’t understand how a husband can stand by and see his wife in another man’s arms, and as far as I’m concerned I’ve never danced a step since I married. But the native dancing is quite another matter. It’s not only immoral in itself, but it distinctly leads to immorality. However, I’m thankful to God that we stamped it out, and I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that no one has danced in our district for eight years.”

But now they came to the mouth of the harbour and Mrs Macphail joined them. The ship turned sharply and steamed slowly in. It was a great landlocked harbour big enough to hold a fleet of battleships; and all around it rose, high and steep, the green hills. Near the entrance, getting such breeze as blew from the sea, stood the governor’s house in a garden. The Stars and Stripes dangled languidly from a flagstaff. They passed two or three trim bungalows, and a tennis court, and then they came to the quay with its warehouses. Mrs Davidson pointed out the schooner, moored two or three hundred yards from the side, which was to take them to Apia. There was a crowd of eager, noisy, and good-humoured natives come from all parts of the island, some from curiosity, others to barter with the travellers on their way to Sydney; and they brought pineapples and huge bunches of bananas, tapa cloths, necklaces of shells or sharks’ teeth, kava-bowls, and models of war canoes. American sailors, neat and trim, clean-shaven and frank of face, sauntered among them, and there was a little group of officials. While their luggage was being landed the Macphails and Mrs Davidson watched the crowd. Dr Macphail looked at the yaws from which most of the children and the young boys seemed to suffer, disfiguring sores like torpid ulcers, and his professional eyes glistened when he saw for the first time in his experience cases of elephantiasis, men going about with a huge, heavy arm or dragging along a grossly disfigured leg. Men and women wore the lava-lava.

“It’s a very indecent costume,” said Mrs Davidson. “Mr Davidson thinks it should be prohibited by law. How can you expect people to be moral when they wear nothing but a strip of red cotton round their loins?”

“It’s suitable enough to the climate,” said the doctor, wiping the sweat off his head.

Now that they were on land the heat, though it Was so early in the morning, was already oppressive. Closed in by its hills, not a breath of air came in to Pago-Pago.

“In our islands,” Mrs Davidson went on in her high-pitched tones, “we’ve practically eradicated the lava-lava. A few old men still continue to wear it, but that’s all. The women have all taken to the Mother Hubbard, and the men wear trousers and singlets. At the beginning of our stay Mr Davidson said in one of his reports: the inhabitants of these islands will never be thoroughly Christianized till every boy of more than ten years is made to wear a pair of trousers.”

But Mrs Davidson had given two or three of her birdlike glances at heavy grey clouds that came floating over the mouth of the harbour. A few drops began to fall.

“We’d better take shelter,” she said.

They made their way with all the crowd to a great shed of corrugated iron, and the rain began to fall in torrents. They stood there for some time and then were joined by Mr Davidson. He had been polite enough to the Macphails during the journey, but he had not his wife’s sociability, and had spent much of his time reading. He was a silent, rather sullen man, and you felt that his affability was a duty that he imposed upon himself Christianly; he was by nature reserved and even morose. His appearance was singular. He was very tall and thin, with long limbs loosely jointed; hollow cheeks, and curiously high cheek-bones; he had so cadaverous an air that it surprised you to notice how full and sensual were his lips. He wore his hair very long. His dark eyes, set deep in their sockets, were large and tragic; and his hands with their big, long fingers, were finely shaped; they gave him a look of great strength. But the most striking thing about him was the feeling he gave you of suppressed fire. It was impressive and vaguely troubling. He was not a man with whom any intimacy was possible.

He brought now unwelcome news. There was an epidemic of measles, a serious and often fatal disease among the Kanakas, on the island, and a case had developed among the crew of the schooner which was to take them on their journey. The sick man had been brought ashore and put in hospital on the quarantine station, but telegraphic instructions had been sent from Apia to say that the schooner would not be allowed to enter the harbour till it was certain no other member of the crew was affected.

“It means we shall have to stay here for ten days at least.”

“But I’m urgently needed at Apia,” said Dr Macphail.

“That can’t be helped. If no more cases develop on board, the schooner will be allowed to sail with white passengers, but all native traffic is prohibited for three months.”

“Is there a hotel here?” asked Mrs Macphail.

Davidson gave a low chuckle.

“There’s not.”

“What shall we do then?”

“I’ve been talking to the governor. There’s a trader along the front who has rooms that he rents, and my proposition is that as soon as the rain lets up we should go along there and see what we can do. Don’t expect comfort. You’ve just got to be thankful if we get a bed to sleep on and a roof over our heads.”

But the rain showed no signs of stopping, and at length with umbrellas and waterproofs they set out. There was no town, but merely a group of official buildings, a store or two, and at the back, among the coconut trees and plantains, a few native dwellings. The house they sought was about five minutes’ walk from the wharf. It was a frame house of two storeys, with broad verandas on both floors and a roof of corrugated iron. The owner was a half-caste named Horn, with a native wife surrounded by little brown children, and on the ground-floor he had a store where he sold canned goods and cottons. The rooms he showed them were almost bare of furniture. In the Macphails’ there was nothing but a poor, worn bed with a ragged mosquito net, a rickety chair, and a washstand. They looked round with dismay. The rain poured down without ceasing.

“I’m not going to unpack more than we actually need,” said Mrs Macphail.

Mrs Davidson came into the room as she was unlocking a portmanteau. She was very brisk and alert. The cheerless surroundings had no effect on her.

“If you’ll take my advice you’ll get a needle and cotton and start right in to mend the mosquito net,” she said, “or you’ll not be able to get a wink of sleep tonight.”

“Will they be very bad?” asked Dr Macphail.

“This is the season for them. When you’re asked to a party at Government House at Apia you’ll notice that all the ladies are given a pillowslip to put their-their lower extremities in.”

“I wish the rain would stop for a moment,” said Mrs Macphail. “I could try to make the place comfortable with more heart if the sun were shining.”

“Oh, if you wait for that, you’ll wait a long time. Pago-Pago is about the rainiest place in the Pacific. You see, the hills, and that bay, they attract the water, and one expects rain at this time of year anyway.”

She looked from Macphail to his wife, standing helplessly in different parts of the room, like lost souls, and she pursed her lips. She saw that she must take them in hand. Feckless people like that made her impatient, but her hands itched to put everything in the order which came so naturally to her.

“Here, you give me a needle and cotton and I’ll mend that net of yours, while you go on with your unpacking. Dinner’s at one. Dr Macphail, you’d better go down to the wharf and see that your heavy luggage has been put in a dry place. You know what these natives are, they’re quite capable of storing it where the rain will beat in on it all the time.”

The doctor put on his waterproof again and went downstairs. At the door Mr Horn was standing in conversation with the quartermaster of the ship they had just arrived in and a second-class passenger whom Dr Macphail had seen several times on board. The quartermaster, a little, shrivelled man, extremely dirty, nodded to him as he passed.

“This is a bad job about the measles, doc,” he said. “I see you’ve fixed yourself up already.”

Dr Macphail thought he was rather familiar, but he was a timid man and he did not take offence easily.

“Yes, we’ve got a room upstairs.”

“Miss Thompson was sailing with you to Apia, so I’ve brought her along here.”

The quartermaster pointed with his thumb to the woman standing by his side. She was twenty-seven perhaps, plump, and in a coarse fashion pretty. She wore a white dress and a large white hat. Her fat calves in white cotton stockings bulged over the tops of long white boots in glace kid. She gave Macphail an ingratiating smile.

“The feller’s tryin’ to soak me a dollar and a half a day for the meanest-sized room,” she said in a hoarse voice.

“I tell you she’s a friend of mine, Jo,” said the quartermaster. “She can’t pay more than a dollar, and you’ve sure got to take her for that.”

The trader was fat and smooth and quietly smiling.

“Well, if you put it like that, Mr Swan, I’ll see what I can do about it. I’ll talk to Mrs Horn and if we think we can make a reduction we will.”

“Don’t try to pull that stuff with me,” said Miss Thompson. “We’ll settle this right now. You get a dollar a day for the room and not one bean more.”

Dr Macphail smiled. He admired the effrontery with which she bargained. He was the sort of man who always paid what he was asked. He preferred to be over-charged than to haggle. The trader sighed.

“Well, to oblige Mr Swan I’ll take it.”

“That’s the goods,” said Miss Thompson. “Come right in and have a shot of hooch. I’ve got some real good rye in that grip if you’ll bring it along, Mr Swan. You come along too, doctor.”

“Oh, I don’t think I will, thank you,” he answered.” I’m just going down to see that our luggage is all right.”

He stepped out into the rain. It swept in from the opening of the harbour in sheets and the opposite shore was all blurred. He passed two or three natives clad in nothing but the lava-lava, with huge umbrellas over them. They walked finely, with leisurely movements, very upright; and they smiled and greeted him in a strange tongue as they went by.

It was nearly dinner-time when he got back, and their meal was laid in the trader’s parlour. It was a room designed not to live in but for purposes of prestige, and it had a musty, melancholy air. A suite of stamped plush was arranged neatly round the walls, and from the middle of the ceiling, protected from the flies by yellow tissue-paper, hung a gilt chandelier. Davidson did not come.

“I know he went to call on the governor,” said Mrs Davidson, “and I guess he’s kept him to dinner.”

A little native girl brought them a dish of Hamburger steak, and after a while the trader came up to see that they had everything they wanted.

“I see we have a fellow lodger, Mr Horn,” said Dr Macphail.

“She’s taken a room, that’s all,” answered the trader. “She’s getting her own board.”

He looked at the two ladies with an obsequious air.

“I put her downstairs so she shouldn’t be in the way. She won’t be any trouble to you.”

“Is it someone who was on the boat?” asked Mrs Macphail.

“Yes, ma’am, she was in the second cabin. She was going to Apia. She has a position as cashier waiting for her.”

“Oh!”

When the trader was gone Macphail said:

“I shouldn’t think she’d find it exactly cheerful having her meals in her room.”

“If she was in the second cabin I guess she’d rather,” answered Mrs Davidson. “I don’t exactly know who it can be.”

“I happened to be there when the quartermaster brought her along. Her name’s Thompson.”

“It’s not the woman who was dancing with the quartermaster last night?” asked Mrs Davidson.

“That’s who it must be,” said Mrs Macphail. “I wondered at the time what she was. She looked rather fast to me.”

“Not good style at all,” said Mrs Davidson.

They began to talk of other things, and after dinner, tired with their early rise, they separated and slept. When they awoke, though the sky was still grey and the clouds hung low, it was not raining and they went for a walk on the high road which the Americans had built along the bay.

On their return they found that Davidson had just come in.

“We may be here for a fortnight,” he said irritably. “I’ve argued it out with the governor, but he says there is nothing to be done.”

“Mr Davidson’s just longing to get back to his work,” said his wife, with an anxious glance at him.

“We’ve been away for a year,” he said, walking up and down the veranda. “The mission has been in charge of native missionaries and I’m terribly nervous that they’ve let things slide. They’re good men, I’m not saying a word against them, God-fearing, devout, and truly Christian men-their Christianity would put many so-called Christians at home to the blush-but they’re pitifully lacking in energy. They can make a stand once, they can make a stand twice, but they can’t make a stand all the time. If you leave a mission in charge of a native missionary, no matter how trustworthy he seems, in course of time you’ll find he’s let abuses creep in.”

Mr Davidson stood still. With his tall, spare form, and his great eyes flashing out of his pale face, he was an impressive figure. His sincerity was obvious in the fire of his gestures and in his deep, ringing voice.

“I expect to have my work cut out for me. I shall act and I shall act promptly. If the tree is rotten it shall be cut down and cast into the flames.”

And in the evening after the high tea which was their last meal, while they sat in the stiff parlour, the ladies working and Dr Macphail smoking his pipe, the missionary told them of his work in the islands.

“When we went there they had no sense of sin at all,” he said. “They broke the commandments one after the other and never knew they were doing wrong. And I think that was the most difficult part of my work, to instil into the natives the sense of sin.”

The Macphails knew already that Davidson had worked in the Solomons for five years before he met his wife. She had been a missionary in China, and they had become acquainted in Boston, where they were both spending part of their leave to attend a missionary congress. On their marriage they had been appointed to the islands in which they had laboured ever since.

In the course of all the conversations they had had with Mr Davidson one thing had shone out clearly and that was the man’s unflinching courage. He was a medical missionary, and he was liable to be called at any time to one or other of the islands in the group. Even the whaleboat is not so very safe a conveyance in the stormy Pacific of the wet season, but often he would be sent for in a canoe, and then the danger was great. In cases of illness or accident he never hesitated. A dozen times he had spent the whole night baling for his life, and more than once Mrs Davidson had given him up for lost.

“I’d beg him not to go sometimes,” she said, “or at least to wait till the weather was more settled, but he’d never listen. He’s obstinate, and when he’s once made up his mind, nothing can move him.”

“How can I ask the natives to put their trust in the Lord if I am afraid to do so myself?” cried Davidson. And I’m not, I’m not. They know that if they send for me in their trouble I’ll come if it’s humanly possible. And do you think the Lord is going to abandon me when I am on his business? The wind blows at his bidding and the waves toss and rage at his word.”

Dr Macphail was a timid man. He had never been able to get used to the hurtling of the shells over the trenches, and when he was operating in an advanced dressing-station the sweat poured from his brow and dimmed his spectacles in the effort he made to control his unsteady hand. He shuddered a little as he looked at the missionary.

“I wish I could say that I’ve never been afraid,” he said.

“I wish you could say that you believed in God,” retorted the other.

But for some reason, that evening the missionary’s thoughts travelled back to the early days he and his wife had spent on the islands.

“Sometimes Mrs Davidson and I would look at one another and the tears would stream down our cheeks. We worked without ceasing, day and night, and we seemed to make no progress. I don’t know what I should have done without her then. When I felt my heart sink, when I was very near despair, she gave me courage and hope.”

Mrs Davidson looked down at her work, and a slight colour rose to her thin cheeks. Her hands trembled a little. She did not trust herself to speak.

“We had no one to help us. We were alone, thousands of miles from any of our own people, surrounded by darkness. When I was broken and weary she would put her work aside and take the Bible and read to me till peace came and settled upon me like sleep upon the eyelids of a child, and when at last she closed the book she’d say: ‘We’ll save them in spite of themselves.’ And I felt strong again in the Lord, and I answered: ‘Yes, with God’s help I’ll save them. I must save them.’”

He came over to the table and stood in front of it as though it were a lectern.

“You see, they were so naturally depraved that they couldn’t be brought to see their wickedness. We had to make sins out of what they thought were natural actions. We had to make it a sin, not only to commit adultery and to lie and thieve, but to expose their bodies, and to dance and not to come to church. I made it a sin for a girl to show her bosom and a sin for a man not to wear trousers.”

“How?” asked Dr Macphail, not without surprise.

“I instituted fines. Obviously the only way to make people realize that an action is sinful is to punish them if they commit it. I fined them if they didn’t come to church, and I fined them if they danced. I fined them if they were improperly dressed. I had a tariff, and every sin had to be paid for either in money or work. And at last I made them understand.”

“But did they never refuse to pay?”

“How could they?” asked the missionary.

“It would be a brave man who tried to stand up against Mr Davidson,” said his wife, tightening her lips.

Dr Macphail looked at Davidson with troubled eyes. What he heard shocked him, but he hesitated to express his disapproval.

“You must remember that in the last resort I could expel them from their church membership.”

“Did they mind that?”

Davidson smiled a little and gently rubbed his hands.

“They couldn’t sell their copra. When the men fished they got no share of the catch. It meant something very like starvation. Yes, they minded quite a lot.”

“Tell him about Fred Ohlson,” said Mrs Davidson.

The missionary fixed his fiery eyes on Dr Macphail.

“Fred Ohlson was a Danish trader who had been in the islands a good many years. He was a pretty rich man as traders go and he wasn’t very pleased when we came. You see, he’d had things very much his own way. He paid the natives what he liked for their copra, and he paid in goods and whisky. He had a native wife, but he was flagrantly unfaithful to her. He was a drunkard. I gave him a chance to mend his ways, but he wouldn’t take it. He laughed at me.”

Davidson’s voice fell to a deep bass as he said the last words, and he was silent for a minute or two. The silence was heavy with menace.

“In two years he was a ruined man. He’d lost everything he’d saved in a quarter of a century. I broke him, and at last he was forced to come to me like a beggar and beseech me to give him a passage back to Sydney.”

“I wish you could have seen him when he came to see Mr Davidson,” said the missionary’s wife. “He had been a fine, powerful man, with a lot of fat on him, and he had a great big voice, but now he was half the size, and he was shaking all over. He’d suddenly become an old man.”

With abstracted gaze Davidson looked out into the night. The rain was falling again.

Suddenly from below came a sound, and Davidson turned and looked questioningly at his wife. It was the sound of a gramophone, harsh and loud, wheezing out a syncopated tune.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Mrs Davidson fixed her pince-nez more firmly on her nose.

“One of the second-class passengers has a room in the house. I guess it comes from there.”

They listened in silence, and presently they heard the sound of dancing. Then the music stopped, and they heard the popping of corks and voices raised in animated conversation.

“I daresay she’s giving a farewell party to her friends on board,” said Dr Macphail. “The ship sails at twelve, doesn’t it?”

Davidson made no remark, but he looked at his watch.

“Are you ready?” he asked his wife.

She got up and folded her work.

“Yes, I guess I am,” she answered.

“It’s early to go to bed yet, isn’t it?” said the doctor.

“We have a good deal of reading to do,” explained Mrs Davidson. “Wherever we are, we read a chapter of the Bible before retiring for the night and we study it with the commentaries, you know, and discuss it thoroughly. It’s a wonderful training for the mind.”

The two couples bade one another good night. Dr and Mrs Macphail were left alone. For two or three minutes they did not speak.

“I think I’ll go and fetch the cards,” the doctor said at last.

Mrs Macphail looked at him doubtfully. Her conversation with the Davidsons had left her a little uneasy, but she did not like to say that she thought they had better not play cards when the Davidsons might come in at any moment. Dr Macphail brought them and she watched him, though with a vague sense of guilt, while he laid out his patience. Below the sound of revelry continued.

It was fine enough next day, and the Macphails, condemned to spend a fortnight of idleness at Pago-Pago, set about making the best of things. They went down to the quay and got out of their boxes a number of books. The doctor called on the chief surgeon of the naval hospital and went round the beds with him. They left cards on the governor. They passed Miss Thompson on the road. The doctor took off his hat, and she gave him a “Good morning doc,” in a loud, cheerful voice. She was dressed as on the day before, in a white frock, and her shiny white boots with their high heels, her fat legs bulging over the tops of them, were strange things on that exotic scene.

“I don’t think she’s very suitably dressed, I must say,” said Mrs Macphail. “She looks extremely common to me.”

When they got back to their house, she was on the veranda playing with one of the trader’s dark children.

“Say a word to her,” Dr Macphail whispered to his wife. “She’s all alone here, and it seems rather unkind to ignore her.”

Mrs Macphail was shy, but she was in the habit of doing what her husband bade her.

“I think we’re fellow lodgers here,” she said, rather foolishly.

“Terrible, ain’t it, bein’ cooped up in a one-horse burg like this?” answered Miss Thompson. “And they tell me I’m lucky to have gotten a room. I don’t see myself livin’ in a native house, and that’s what some have to do. I don’t know why they don’t have a hotel.”

They exchanged a few more words. Miss Thompson, loud-voiced and garrulous, was evidently quite willing to gossip, but Mrs Macphail had a poor stock of small talk and presently she said:

“Well, I think we must go upstairs.”

In the evening when they sat down to their high tea, Davidson on coming in said:

“I see that woman downstairs has a couple of sailors sitting there. I wonder how she’s gotten acquainted with them.”

“She can’t be very particular,” said Mrs Davidson.

They were all rather tired after the idle, aimless day.

“If there’s going to be a fortnight of this I don’t know what we shall feel like at the end of it,” said Dr Macphail.

“The only thing to do is to portion out the day to different activities,” answered the missionary. “I shall set aside a certain number of hours to study and a certain number to exercise, rain or fine-in the wet season you can’t afford to pay any attention to the rain-and a certain number to recreation.”

Dr Macphail looked at his companion with misgiving. Davidson’s programme oppressed him. They were eating Hamburger steak again. It seemed the only dish the cook knew how to make. Then below the gramophone began. Davidson started nervously when he heard it, but said nothing. Men’s voices floated up. Miss Thompson’s guests were joining in a well-known song and presently they heard her voice too, hoarse and loud. There was a good deal of shouting and laughing. The four people upstairs, trying to make conversation, listened despite themselves to the clink of glasses and the scrape of chairs. More people had evidently come. Miss Thompson was giving a party.

“I wonder how she gets them all in,” said Mrs Macphail suddenly breaking into a medical conversation between the missionary and her husband.

It showed whither her thoughts were wandering. The twitch of Davidson’s face proved that, though he spoke of scientific things, his mind was busy in the same direction. Suddenly, while the doctor was giving some experience of practice on the Flanders front, rather prosily, he sprang to his feet with a cry.

“What’s the matter, Alfred?” asked Mrs Davidson.

“Of course! It never occurred to me. She’s out of Iwelei.”

“She can’t be.”

“She came on board at Honolulu. It’s obvious. And she’s carrying on her trade here. Here.”

He uttered the last word with a passion of indignation.

“What’s Iwelei?” asked Mrs Macphail.

He turned his gloomy eyes on her and his voice trembled with horror.

“The plague spot of Honolulu. The Red Light district. It was a blot on our civilization.”

Iwelei was on the edge of the city. You went down side streets by the harbour, in the darkness, across a rickety bridge, till you came to a deserted road, all ruts and holes, and then suddenly you came out into the light. There was parking room for motors on each side of the road, and there were saloons, tawdry and bright, each one noisy with its mechanical piano, and there were barbers’ shops and tobacconists. There was a stir in the air and a sense of expectant gaiety. You turned down a narrow alley, either to the right or to the left, for the road divided Iwelei into two parts, and you found yourself in the district. There were rows of little bungalows, trim and neatly painted in green, and the pathway between them was broad and straight. It was laid out like a garden-city. In its respectable regularity, its order and spruceness, it gave an impression of sardonic horror; for never can the search for love have been so systematized and ordered. The pathways were lit by a rare lamp, but they would have been dark except for the lights that came from the open windows of the bungalows. Men wandered about, looking at the women who sat at their windows, reading or sewing, for the most part taking no notice of the passers-by; and like the women they were of all nationalities. There were Americans, sailors from the ships in port, enlisted men off the gunboats, sombrely drunk, and soldiers from the regiments, white and black, quartered on the island; there were Japanese, walking in twos and threes; Hawaiians, Chinese in long robes, and Filipinos in preposterous hats. They were silent and as it were oppressed. Desire is sad.

“It was the most crying scandal of the Pacific,” exclaimed Davidson vehemently. “The missionaries had been agitating against it for years, and at last the local press took it up. The police refused to stir. You know their argument.

They say that vice is inevitable and consequently the best thing is to localize and control it. The truth is, they were paid. Paid. They were paid by the saloon-keepers, paid by the bullies, paid by the women themselves. At last they were forced to move.”

“I read about it in the papers that came on board in Honolulu,” said Dr Macphail.

Iwelei, with its sin and shame, ceased to exist on the very day we arrived. The whole population was brought before the justices. I don’t know why I didn’t understand at once what that woman was.”

“Now you come to speak of it,” said Mrs Macphail, “I remember seeing her come on board only a few minutes before the boat sailed. I remember thinking at the time she was cutting it rather fine.”

“How dare she come here!” cried Davidson indignantly. “I’m not going to allow it.”

He strode towards the door.

“What are you going to do?” asked Macphail.

“What do you expect me to? I’m going to stop it. I’m not going to have this house turned into-into …”

He sought for a word that should not offend the ladies’ ears. His eyes were flashing and his pale face was paler still in his emotion.

“It sounds as though there were three or four men down there,” said the doctor. “Don’t you think it’s rather rash to go in just now?”

The missionary gave him a contemptuous look and without a word flung out of the room.

“You know Mr Davidson very little if you think the fear of personal danger can stop him in the performance of his duty,” said his wife.

She sat with her hands nervously clasped, a spot of colour on her high cheek-bones, listening to what was about to happen below. They all listened. They heard him clatter down the wooden stairs and throw open the door. The singing stopped suddenly, but the gramophone continued to bray out its vulgar tune. They heard Davidson’s voice and then the noise of something heavy falling. The music stopped. He had hurled the gramophone on the floor. Then again they heard Davidson’s voice, they could not make out the words, then Miss Thompson’s, loud and shrill, then a confused clamour as though several people were shouting together at the top of their lungs. Mrs Davidson gave a little gasp, and she clenched her hands more tightly. Dr Macphail looked uncertainly from her to his wife. He did not want to go down, but he wondered if they expected him to. Then there was something that sounded like a scuffle. The noise now was more distinct. It might be that Davidson was being thrown out of the room. The door was slammed. There was a moment’s silence and they heard Davidson come up the stairs again. He went to his room.

“I think I’ll go to him,” said Mrs Davidson.

She got up and went out.

“If you want me, just call,” said Mrs Macphail, and then when the other was gone: “I hope he isn’t hurt.”

“Why couldn’t he mind his own business?” said Dr Macphail.

They sat in silence for a minute or two and then they both started, for the gramophone began to play once more, defiantly, and mocking voices shouted hoarsely the words of an obscene song.

Next day Mrs Davidson was pale and tired. She complained of headache, and she looked old and wizened. She told Mrs Macphail that the missionary had not slept at all; he had passed the night in a state of frightful agitation and at five had got up and gone out. A glass of beer had been thrown over him and his clothes were stained and stinking. But a sombre fire glowed in Mrs Davidson’s eyes when she spoke of Miss Thompson.

“She’ll bitterly rue the day when she flouted Mr Davidson,” she said. “Mr Davidson has a wonderful heart and no one who is in trouble has ever gone to him without being comforted, but he has no mercy for sin, and when his righteous wrath is excited he’s terrible.”

“Why, what will he do?” asked Mrs Macphail.

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t stand in that creature’s shoes for anything in the world.”

Mrs Macphail shuddered. There was something positively alarming in the triumphant assurance of the little woman’s manner. They were going out together that morning, and they went down the stairs side by side. Miss Thompson’s door was open, and they saw her in a bedraggled dressing-gown, cooking something in a chafing-dish.

“Good morning,” she called. “Is Mr Davidson better this morning?”

They passed her in silence, with their noses in the air, as if she did not exist. They flushed, however, when she burst into a shout of derisive laughter. Mrs Davidson turned on her suddenly.

“Don’t you dare to speak to me,” she screamed. “If you insult me I shall have you turned out of here.”

“Say, did I ask Mr Davidson to visit with me?”

“Don’t answer her,” whispered Mrs Macphail hurriedly.

They walked on till they were out of earshot.

“She’s brazen, brazen,” burst from Mrs Davidson.

Her anger almost suffocated her.

And on their way home they met her strolling towards the quay. She had all her finery on. Her great white hat with its vulgar, showy flowers was an affront. She called out cheerily to them as she went by, and a couple of American sailors who were standing there grinned as the ladies set their faces to an icy stare. They got in just before the rain began to fall again.

“I guess she’ll get her fine clothes spoilt,” said Mrs Davidson with a bitter sneer.

Davidson did not come in till they were half-way through dinner. He was wet through, but he would not change. He sat, morose and silent, refusing to eat more than a mouthful, and he stared at the slanting rain. When Mrs Davidson told him of their two encounters with Miss Thompson he did not answer. His deepening frown alone showed that he had heard.

“Don’t you think we ought to make Mr Horn turn her out of here?” asked Mrs Davidson. “We can’t allow her to insult us.”

“There doesn’t seem to be any other place for her to go,” said Macphail.

“She can live with one of the natives.”

“In weather like this a native hut must be a rather uncomfortable place to live in.”

“I lived in one for years,” said the missionary.

When the little native girl brought in the fried bananas which formed the sweet they had every day, Davidson turned to her.

“Ask Miss Thompson when it would be convenient for me to see her,” he said.

The girl nodded shyly and went out.

“What do you want to see her for, Alfred?” asked his wife.

“It’s my duty to see her. I won’t act till I’ve given her every chance.”

“You don’t know what she is. She’ll insult you.”

“Let her insult me. Let her spit on me. She has an immortal soul, and I must do all that is in my power to save it.”

Mrs Davidson’s ears rang still with the harlot’s mocking laughter.

“She’s gone too far.”

“Too far for the mercy of God?” His eyes lit up suddenly and his voice grew mellow and soft. “Never. The sinner may be deeper in sin than the depth of hell itself, but the love of the Lord Jesus can reach him still.”

The girl came back with the message.

“Miss Thompson’s compliments and as long as Rev Davidson don’t come in business hours she’ll be glad to see him any time.”

The party received it in stony silence, and Dr Macphail quickly effaced from his lips the smile which had come upon them. He knew his wife would be vexed with him if he found Miss Thompson’s effrontery amusing.

They finished the meal in silence. When it was over the two ladies got up and took their work. Mrs Macphail was making another of the innumerable comforters which she had turned out since the beginning of the war, and the doctor lit his pipe. But Davidson remained in his chair and with abstracted eyes stared at the table. At last he got up and without a word went out of the room. They heard him go down and they heard Miss Thompson’s defiant “Come in’ when he knocked at the door. He remained with her for an hour. And Dr Macphail watched the rain. It was beginning to get on his nerves. It was not like soft English rain that drops gently on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible; you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive powers of nature. It did not pour, it flowed. It was like a deluge from heaven, and it rattled on the roof of corrugated iron with a steady persistence that was maddening. It seemed to have a fury of its own. And sometimes you felt that you must scream if it did not stop, and then suddenly you felt powerless, as though your bones had suddenly become soft; and you were miserable and hopeless.

Macphail turned his head when the missionary came back. The two women looked up.

“I’ve given her every chance. I have exhorted her to repent. She is an evil woman.”

He paused, and Dr Macphail saw his eyes darken and his pale face grow hard and stern.

“Now I shall take the whips with which the Lord Jesus drove the usurers and the money changers out of the Temple of the Most High.”

He walked up and down the room. His mouth was close set, and his black brows were frowning.

“If she fled to the uttermost parts of the earth I should pursue her.”

With a sudden movement he turned round and strode out of the room. They heard him go downstairs again.

“What is he going to do?” asked Mrs Macphail.

“I don’t know.” Mrs Davidson took off her pince-nez and wiped them. “When he is on the Lord’s work I never ask him questions.”

She sighed a little.

“What is the matter?”

“He’ll wear himself out. He doesn’t know what it is to spare himself.”

Dr Macphail learnt the first results of the missionary’s activity from the halfcaste trader in whose house they lodged. He stopped the doctor when he passed the store and came out to speak to him on the stoop. His fat face was worried.

“The Rev Davidson has been at me for letting Miss Thompson have a room here,” he said, “but I didn’t know what she was when I rented it to her. When people come and ask if I can rent them a room all I want to know is if they’ve the money to pay for it. And she paid me for hers a week in advance.”

Dr Macphail did not want to commit himself.

“When all’s said and done it’s your house. We’re very much obliged to you for taking us in at all.”

Horn looked at him doubtfully. He was not certain yet how definitely Macphail stood on the missionary’s side.

“The missionaries are in with one another,” he said, hesitatingly. “If they get it in for a trader he may just as well shut up his store and quit.”

“Did he want you to turn her out?”

“No, he said so long as she behaved herself he couldn’t ask me to do that. He said he wanted to be just to me. I promised she shouldn’t have no more visitors. I’ve just been and told her.”

“How did she take it?”

“She gave me Hell.”

The trader squirmed in his old ducks. He had found Miss Thompson a rough customer.

“Oh, well, I daresay she’ll get out. I don’t suppose she wants to stay here if she can’t have anyone in.”

“There’s nowhere she can go, only a native house, and no native’ll take her now, not now that the missionaries have got their knife in her.”

Dr Macphail looked at the falling rain.

“Well, I don’t suppose it’s any good waiting for it to clear up.”

In the evening when they sat in the parlour Davidson talked to them of his early days at college. He had had no means and had worked his way through by doing odd jobs during the vacations. There was silence downstairs. Miss Thompson was sitting in her little room alone. But suddenly the gramophone began to play. She had set it on in defiance, to cheat her loneliness, but there was no one to sing, and it had a melancholy note. It was like a cry for help. Davidson took no notice. He was in the middle of a long anecdote and without change of expression went on. The gramophone continued. Miss Thompson put on one reel after another. It looked as though the silence of the night were getting on her nerves. It was breathless and sultry. When the Macphails went to bed they could not sleep. They lay side by side with their eyes wide open, listening to the cruel singing of the mosquitoes outside their curtain.

“What’s that?” whispered Mrs Macphail at last.

They heard a voice, Davidson’s voice, through the wooden partition. It went on with a monotonous, earnest insistence. He was praying aloud. He was praying for the soul of Miss Thompson.

Two or three days went by. Now when they passed Miss Thompson on the road she did not greet them with ironic cordiality or smile; she passed with her nose in the air, a sulky look on her painted face, frowning, as though she did not see them. The trader told Macphail that she had tried to get lodging elsewhere, but had failed. In the evening she played through the various reels of her gramophone, but the pretence of mirth was obvious now. The ragtime had a cracked, heart-broken rhythm as though it were a one-step of despair.

When she began to play on Sunday Davidson sent Horn to beg her to stop at once since it was the Lord’s day. The reel was taken off and the house was silent except for the steady pattering of the rain on the iron roof.

“I think she’s getting a bit worked up,” said the trader next day to Macphail. “She don’t know what Mr Davidson’s up to and it makes her scared.”

Macphail had caught a glimpse of her that morning and it struck him that her arrogant expression had changed. There was in her face a hunted look. The half-caste gave him a sidelong glance.

“I suppose you don’t know what Mr Davidson is doing about it?” he hazarded.

“No, I don’t.”

It was singular that Horn should ask him that question, for he also had the idea that the missionary was mysteriously at work.

He had an impression that he was weaving a net around the woman, carefully, systematically, and suddenly, when everything was ready, would pull the strings tight.

“He told me to tell her,” said the trader, “that if at any time she wanted him she only had to send and he’d come.”

“What did she say when you told her that?”

“She didn’t say nothing. I didn’t stop. I just said what he said I was to and then I beat it. I thought she might be going to start weepin’.”

“I have no doubt the loneliness is getting on her nerves,” said the doctor. “And the rain-that’s enough to make anyone jumpy,” he continued irritably. “Doesn’t it ever stop in this confounded place?”

“It goes on pretty steady in the rainy season. We have three hundred inches in the year. You see, it’s the shape of the bay. It seems to attract the rain from all over the Pacific.”

“Damn the shape of the bay,” said the doctor.

He scratched his mosquito bites. He felt very short-tempered. When the rain stopped and the sun shone, it was like a hot-house, seething, humid, sultry, breathless, and you had a strange feeling that everything was growing with a savage violence. The natives, blithe and childlike by reputation, seemed then, with their tattooing and their dyed hair, to have something sinister in their appearance; and when they pattered along at your heels with their naked feet you looked back instinctively. You felt they might at any moment come behind you swiftly and thrust a long knife between your shoulder-blades. You could not tell what dark thought lurked behind their wide-set eyes. They had a little the look of ancient Egyptians painted on a temple wall, and there was about them the terror of what is immeasurably old.

The missionary came and went. He was busy, but the Macphails did not know what he was doing. Horn told the doctor that he saw the governor every day, and once Davidson mentioned him.

“He looks as if he had plenty of determination,” he said, “but when you come down to brass tacks he has no backbone.”

“I suppose that means he won’t do exactly what you want,” suggested the doctor facetiously.

The missionary did not smile.

“I want him to do what’s right. It shouldn’t be necessary to persuade a man to do that.”

“But there may be differences of opinion about what is right.”

“If a man had a gangrenous foot would you have patience with anyone who hesitated to amputate it?”

“Gangrene is a matter of fact.”

“And Evil?”

What Davidson had done soon appeared. The four of them had just finished their midday meal, and they had not yet separated for the siesta which the heat imposed on the ladies and on the doctor. Davidson had little patience with the slothful habit. The door was suddenly flung open and Miss Thompson came in. She looked round the room and then went up to Davidson.

“You low-down skunk, what have you been saying about me to the governor?”

She was spluttering with rage. There was a moment’s pause. Then the missionary drew forward a chair.

“Won’t you be seated, Miss Thompson? I’ve been hoping to have another talk with you.”

“You poor low-life bastard.”

She burst into a torrent of insult, foul and insolent. Davidson kept his grave eyes on her.

“I’m indifferent to the abuse you think fit to heap on me, Miss Thompson,” he said, “but I must beg you to remember that ladies are present.”

Tears by now were struggling with her anger. Her face was red and swollen as though she were choking.

“What has happened?” asked Dr Macphail.

“A feller’s just been in here and he says I gotter beat it on the next boat.”

Was there a gleam in the missionary’s eyes? His face remained impassive.

“You could hardly expect the governor to let you stay here under the circumstances.”

“You done it,” she shrieked. “You can’t kid me. You done it.”

“I don’t want to deceive you. I urged the governor to take the only possible step consistent with his obligations.”

“Why couldn’t you leave me be? I wasn’t doin’ you no harm.”

“You may be sure that if you had I should be the last man to resent it.”

“Do you think I want to stay on in this poor imitation of a burg? I don’t look no busher, do I?”

“In that case I don’t see what cause of complaint you have,” he answered.

She gave an inarticulate cry of rage and flung out of the room. There was a short silence.

“It’s a relief to know that the governor has acted at last,” said Davidson finally. “He’s a weak man and he shilly-shallied. He said she was only here for a fortnight anyway, and if she went on to Apia, that was under British jurisdiction and had nothing to do with him.”

The missionary sprang to his feet and strode across the room.

“It’s terrible the way the men who are in authority seek to evade their responsibility. They speak as though evil that was out of sight ceased to be evil. The very existence of that woman is a scandal and it does not help matters to shift it to another of the islands. In the end I had to speak straight from the shoulder.”

Davidson’s brow lowered, and he protruded his firm chin. He looked fierce and determined.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Our mission is not entirely without influence at Washington. I pointed out to the governor that it wouldn’t do him any good if there was a complaint about the way he managed things here.”

“When has she got to go?” asked the doctor, after a pause.

“The San Francisco boat is due here from Sydney next Tuesday. She’s to sail on that.”

That was in five days’ time. It was next day, when he was coming back from the hospital where for want of something better to do Macphail spent most of his mornings, that the half-caste stopped him as he was going upstairs.

“Excuse me, Dr Macphail, Miss Thompson’s sick. Will you have a look at her?”

“Certainly.”

Horn led him to her room. She was sitting in a chair idly, neither reading nor sewing, staring in front of her. She wore her white dress and the large hat with the flowers on it. Macphail noticed that her skin was yellow and muddy under her powder, and her eyes were heavy.

“I’m sorry to hear you’re not well,” he said.

“Oh, I ain’t sick really. I just said that, because I just had to see you. I’ve got to clear on a boat that’s going to “Frisco.”

She looked at him and he saw that her eyes were suddenly startled. She opened and clenched her hands spasmodically. The trader stood at the door, listening.

“So I understand,” said the doctor.

She gave a little gulp.

“I guess it ain’t very convenient for me to go to “Frisco just now. I went to see the governor yesterday afternoon, but I couldn’t get to him. I saw the secretary, and he told me I’d got to take that boat and that was all there was to it. I just had to see the governor, so I waited outside his house this morning, and when he came out I spoke to him. He didn’t want to speak to me, I’ll say, but I wouldn’t let him shake me off, and at last he said he hadn’t no objection to my staying here till the next boat to Sydney if the Rev Davidson will stand for it.”

She stopped and looked at Dr Macphail anxiously.

“I don’t know exactly what I can do,” he said.

“Well, I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind asking him. I swear to God I won’t start anything here if he’ll just only let me stay. I won’t go out of the house if that’ll suit him. It’s no more’n a fortnight.”

“I’ll ask him.”

“He won’t stand for it,” said Horn. “He’ll have you out on Tuesday, so you may as well make up your mind to it.”

“Tell him I can get work in Sydney, straight stuff, I mean. “Tain’t asking very much.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“And come and tell me right away, will you? I can’t set down to a thing till I get the dope one way or the other.”

It was not an errand that much pleased the doctor, and, characteristically perhaps, he went about it indirectly. He told his wife what Miss Thompson had said to him and asked her to speak to Mrs Davidson. The missionary’s attitude seemed rather arbitrary and it could do no harm if the girl were allowed to stay in Pago-Pago another fortnight. But he was not prepared for the result of his diplomacy. The missionary came to him straightway.

“Mrs Davidson tells me that Thompson has been speaking to you.”

Dr Macphail, thus directly tackled, had the shy man’s resentment at being forced out into the open. He felt his temper rising, and he flushed.

“I don’t see that it can make any difference if she goes to Sydney rather than to San Francisco, and so long as she promises to behave while she’s here it’s dashed hard to persecute her.”

The missionary fixed him with his stern eyes.

“Why is she unwilling to go back to San Francisco?”

“I didn’t inquire,” answered the doctor with some asperity. “And I think one does better to mind one’s own business.”

Perhaps it was not a very tactful answer.

“The governor has ordered her to be deported by the first boat that leaves the island. He’s only done his duty and I will not interfere. Her presence is a peril here.”

“I think you’re very harsh and tyrannical.”

The two ladies looked up at the doctor with some alarm, but they need not have feared a quarrel, for the missionary smiled gently.

“I’m terribly sorry you should think that of me, Dr Macphail. Believe me, my heart bleeds for that unfortunate woman, but I’m only trying to do my duty.”

The doctor made no answer. He looked out of the window sullenly. For once it was not raining and across the bay you saw nestling among the trees the huts of a native village.

“I think I’ll take advantage of the rain stopping to go out,” he said.

“Please don’t bear me malice because I can’t accede to your wish,” said Davidson, with a melancholy smile. “I respect you very much, doctor, and I should be sorry if you thought ill of me.”

“I have no doubt you have a sufficiently good opinion of yourself to bear mine with equanimity,” he retorted.

“That’s one on me,” chuckled Davidson.

When Dr Macphail, vexed with himself because he had been uncivil to no purpose, went downstairs, Miss Thompson was waiting for him with her door ajar.

“Well,” she said, “have you spoken to him?”

“Yes, I’m sorry, he won’t do anything,” he answered, not looking at her in his embarrassment.

But then he gave her a quick glance, for a sob broke from her. He saw that her face was white with fear. It gave him a shock of dismay. And suddenly he had an idea.

“But don’t give up hope yet. I think it’s a shame the way they’re treating you and I’m going to see the governor myself.”

“Now?”

He nodded. Her face brightened.

“Say, that’s real good of you. I’m sure he’ll let me stay if you speak for me. I just won’t do a thing I didn’t ought all the time I’m here.”

Dr Macphail hardly knew why he had made up his mind to appeal to the governor. He was perfectly indifferent to Miss Thompson’s affairs, but the missionary had irritated him, and with him temper was a smouldering thing. He found the governor at home. He was a large, handsome man, a sailor, with a grey toothbrush moustache; and he wore a spotless uniform of white drill.

“I’ve come to see you about a woman who’s lodging in the same house as we are,” he said. “Her name’s Thompson.”

“I guess I’ve heard nearly enough about her, Dr Macphail,” said the governor, smiling. “I’ve given her the order to get out next Tuesday and that’s all I can do.”

“I wanted to ask you if you couldn’t stretch a point and let her stay here till the boat comes in from San Francisco so that she can go to Sydney. I will guarantee her good behaviour.”

The governor continued to smile, but his eyes grew small and serious.

“I’d be very glad to oblige you, Dr Macphail, but I’ve given the order and it must stand.”

The doctor put the case as reasonably as he could, but now the governor ceased to smile at all. He listened sullenly, with averted gaze. Macphail saw that he was making no impression.

“I’m sorry to cause any lady inconvenience, but she’ll have to sail on Tuesday and that’s all there is to it.”

“But what difference can it make?”

“Pardon me, doctor, but I don’t feel called upon to explain my official actions except to the proper authorities.”

Macphail looked at him shrewdly. He remembered Davidson’s hint that he had used threats, and in the governor’s attitude he read a singular embarrassment.

“Davidson’s a damned busybody,” he said hotly.

“Between ourselves, Dr Macphail, I don’t say that I have formed a very favourable opinion of Mr Davidson, but I am bound to confess that he was within his rights in pointing out to me the danger that the presence of a woman of Miss Thompson’s character was to a place like this where a number of enlisted men are stationed among a native population.”

He got up and Dr Macphail was obliged to do so too.

“I must ask you to excuse me. I have an engagement. Please give my respects to Mrs Macphail.”

The doctor left him crestfallen. He knew that Miss Thompson would be waiting for him, and unwilling to tell her himself that he had failed, he went into the house by the back door and sneaked up the stairs as though he had something to hide.

At supper he was silent and ill-at-ease, but the missionary was jovial and animated. Dr Macphail thought his eyes rested on him now and then with triumphant good-humour. It struck him suddenly that Davidson knew of his visit to the governor and of its ill success. But how on earth could he have heard of it? There was something sinister about the power of that man. After supper he saw Horn on the veranda and, as though to have a casual word with him, went out.

“She wants to know if you’ve seen the governor,” the trader whispered.

“Yes. He wouldn’t do anything. I’m awfully sorry, I can’t do anything more.”

“I knew he wouldn’t. They daren’t go against the missionaries.”

“What are you talking about?” said Davidson affably, coming out to join them.

“I was just saying there was no chance of your getting over to Apia for at least another week,” said the trader glibly.

He left them, and the two men returned into the parlour. Mr Davidson devoted one hour after each meal to recreation. Presently a timid knock was heard at the door.

“Come in,” said Mrs Davidson, in her sharp voice.

The door was not opened. She got up and opened it. They saw Miss Thompson standing at the threshold. But the change in her appearance was extraordinary. This was no longer the flaunting hussy who had jeered at them in the road, but a broken, frightened woman. Her hair, as a rule so elaborately arranged, was tumbling untidily over her neck. She wore bedroom slippers and a skirt and blouse. They were unfresh and bedraggled. She stood at the door with the tears streaming down her face and did not dare to enter.

“What do you want?” said Mrs Davidson harshly.

“May I speak to Mr Davidson?” she said in a choking voice.

The missionary rose and went towards her.

“Come right in, Miss Thompson,” he said in cordial tones. “What can I do for you?”

She entered the room.

“Say, I’m sorry for what I said to you the other day an’ for-for everythin’ else. I guess I was a bit lit up. I beg pardon.”

“Oh, it was nothing. I guess my back’s broad enough to bear a few hard words.”

She stepped towards him with a movement that was horribly cringing.

“You’ve got me beat. I’m all in. You won’t make me go back to “Frisco?”

His genial manner vanished and his voice grew on a sudden hard and stern.

“Why don’t you want to go back there?”

She cowered before him.

“I guess my people live there. I don’t want them to see me like this. I’ll go anywhere else you say.”

“Why don’t you want to go back to San Francisco?”

“I’ve told you.”

He leaned forward, staring at her, and his great, shining eyes seemed to try to bore into her soul. He gave a sudden gasp.

“The penitentiary.”

She screamed, and then she fell at his feet, clasping his legs.

“Don’t send me back there. I swear to you before God I’ll be a good woman. I’ll give all this up.”

She burst into a torrent of confused supplication and the tears coursed down her painted cheeks. He leaned over her and, lifting her face, forced her to look at him.

“Is that it, the penitentiary?”

“I beat it before they could get me,” she gasped. “If the bulls grab me it’s three years for me.”

He let go his hold of her and she fell in a heap on the floor, sobbing bitterly. Dr Macphail stood up.

“This alters the whole thing,” he said. “You can’t make her go back when you know this. Give her another chance. She wants to turn over a new leaf.”

“I’m going to give her the finest chance she’s ever had. If she repents let her accept her punishment.”

She misunderstood the words and looked up. There was a gleam of hope in her heavy eyes.

“You’ll let me go?”

“No. You shall sail for San Francisco on Tuesday.”

She gave a groan of horror and then burst into low, hoarse shrieks which sounded hardly human, and she beat her head passionately on the ground. Dr Macphail sprang to her and lifted her up.

“Come on, you mustn’t do that. You’d better go to your room and lie down. I’ll get you something.”

He raised her to her feet and partly dragging her, partly carrying her, got her downstairs. He was furious with Mrs Davidson and with his wife because they made no effort to help. The half-caste was standing on the landing and with his assistance he managed to get her on the bed. She was moaning and crying. She was almost insensible. He gave her a hypodermic injection. He was hot and exhausted when he went upstairs again.

“I’ve got her to lie down.”

The two women and Davidson were in the same positions as when he had left them. They could not have moved or spoken since he went.

“I was waiting for you,” said Davidson, in a strange, distant voice. “I want you all to pray with me for the soul of our erring sister.”

He took the Bible off a shelf, and sat down at the table at which they had supped. It had not been cleared, and he pushed the tea-pot out of the way. In a powerful voice, resonant and deep, he read to them the chapter in which is narrated the meeting of Jesus Christ with the woman taken in adultery.

“Now kneel with me and let us pray for the soul of our dear sister, Sadie Thompson.”

He burst into a long, passionate prayer in which he implored God to have mercy on the sinful woman. Mrs Macphail and Mrs Davidson knelt with covered eyes. The doctor, taken by surprise, awkward and sheepish, knelt too. The missionary’s prayer had a savage eloquence. He was extraordinarily moved, and as he spoke the tears ran down his cheeks. Outside, the pitiless rain fell, fell steadily, with a fierce malignity that was all too human.

At last he stopped. He paused for a moment and said:

“We will now repeat the Lord’s prayer.”

They said it and then, following him, they rose from their knees. Mrs Davidson’s face was pale and restful. She was comforted and at peace, but the Macphails felt suddenly bashful. They did not know which way to look.

“I’ll just go down and see how she is now,” said Dr Macphail.

When he knocked at her door it was opened for him by Horn. Miss Thompson was in a rocking-chair, sobbing quietly.

“What are you doing there?” exclaimed Macphail. “I told you to lie down.”

“I can’t lie down. I want to see Mr Davidson.”

“My poor child, what do you think is the good of it? You’ll never move him.”

“He said he’d come if I sent for him.”

Macphail motioned to the trader.

“Go and fetch him.”

He waited with her in silence while the trader went upstairs. Davidson came in.

“Excuse me for asking you to come here,” she said, looking at him sombrely.

“I was expecting you to send for me. I knew the Lord would answer my prayer.”

They stared at one another for a moment and then she looked away. She kept her eyes averted when she spoke.

“I’ve been a bad woman. I want to repent.”

“Thank God! Thank God! He has heard our prayers.”

He turned to the two men.

“Leave me alone with her. Tell Mrs Davidson that our prayers have been answered.”

They went out and closed the door behind them.

“Gee whizz,” said the trader.

That night Dr Macphail could not get to sleep till late, and when he heard the missionary come upstairs he looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. But even then he did not go to bed at once, for through the wooden partition that separated their rooms he heard him praying aloud, till he himself, exhausted, fell asleep.

When he saw him next morning he was surprised at his appearance. He was paler than ever, tired, but his eyes shone with inhuman fire. It looked as though he were filled with an overwhelming joy.

“I want you to go down presently and see Sadie,” he said. “I can’t hope that her body is better, but her soul-her soul is transformed.”

The doctor was feeling wan and nervous.

“You were with her very late last night,” he said.

“Yes, she couldn’t bear to have me leave her.”

“You look as pleased as Punch,” the doctor said irritably.

Davidson’s eyes shone with ecstasy.

“A great mercy has been vouchsafed me. Last night I was privileged to bring a lost soul to the loving arms of Jesus.”

Miss Thompson was again in the rocking-chair. The bed had not been made. The room was in disorder. She had not troubled to dress herself, but wore a dirty dressing-gown, and her hair was tied in a sluttish knot. She had given her face a dab with a wet towel, but it was all swollen and creased with crying. She looked a drab.

She raised her eyes dully when the doctor came in. She was cowed and broken.

“Where’s Mr Davidson?” she asked.

“He’ll come presently if you want him,” answered Macphail acidly. “I came here to see how you were.”

“Oh, I guess I’m O.K. You needn’t worry about that.”

“Have you had anything to eat?”

“Horn brought me some coffee.”

She looked anxiously at the door.

“D’you think he’ll come down soon? I feel as if it wasn’t so terrible when he’s with me.”

“Are you still going on Tuesday?”

“Yes, he says I’ve got to go. Please tell him to come right along. You can’t do me any good. He’s the only one as can help me now.”

“Very well,” said Dr Macphail.

During the next three days the missionary spent almost all his time with Sadie Thompson. He joined the others only to have his meals. Dr Macphail noticed that he hardly ate.

“He’s wearing himself out,” said Mrs Davidson pitifully. “He’ll have a breakdown if he doesn’t take care, but he won’t spare himself.”

She herself was white and pale. She told Mrs Macphail that she had no sleep. When the missionary came upstairs from Miss Thompson he prayed till he was exhausted, but even then he did not sleep for long. After an hour or two he got up and dressed himself, and went for a tramp along the bay. He had strange dreams.

“This morning he told me that he’d been dreaming about the mountains of Nebraska,” said Mrs Davidson.

“That’s curious,” said Dr Macphail.

He remembered seeing them from the windows of the train when he crossed America. They were like huge mole-hills, rounded and smooth, and they rose from the plain abruptly. Dr Macphail remembered how it struck him that they were like a woman’s breasts.

Davidson’s restlessness was intolerable even to himself. But he was buoyed up by a wonderful exhilaration. He was tearing out by the roots the last vestiges of sin that lurked in the hidden corners of that poor woman’s heart. He read with her and prayed with her.

“It’s wonderful,” he said to them one day at supper. “It’s a true rebirth. Her soul, which was black as night, is now pure and white like the new-fallen snow.

I am humble and afraid. Her remorse for all her sins is beautiful. I am not worthy to touch the hem of her garment.”

“Have you the heart to send her back to San Francisco?” said the doctor. “Three years in an American prison. I should have thought you might have saved her from that.”

“Ah, but don’t you see? It’s necessary. Do you think my heart doesn’t bleed for her? I love her as I love my wife and my sister. All the time that she is in prison I shall suffer all the pain that she suffers.”

“Bunkum,” cried the doctor impatiently.

“You don’t understand because you’re blind. She’s sinned, and she must suffer. I know what she’ll endure. She’ll be starved and tortured and humiliated. I want her to accept the punishment of man as a sacrifice to God. I want her to accept it joyfully. She has an opportunity which is offered to very few of us. God is very good and very merciful.”

Davidson’s voice trembled with excitement. He could hardly articulate the words that tumbled passionately from his lips.

“All day I pray with her and when I leave her I pray again, I pray with all my might and main, so that Jesus may grant her this great mercy. I want to put in her heart the passionate desire to be punished so that at the end, even if I offered to let her go, she would refuse. I want her to feel that the bitter punishment of prison is the thank-offering that she places at the feet of our Blessed Lord, who gave his life for her.”

The days passed slowly. The whole household, intent on the wretched, tortured woman downstairs, lived in a state of unnatural excitement. She was like a victim that was being prepared for the savage rites of a bloody idolatry. Her terror numbed her. She could not bear to let Davidson out of her sight; it was only when he was with her that she had courage, and she hung upon him with a slavish dependence. She cried a great deal, and she read the Bible, and prayed. Sometimes she was exhausted and apathetic. Then she did indeed look forward to her ordeal, for it seemed to offer an escape, direct and concrete, from the anguish she was enduring. She could not bear much longer the vague terrors which now assailed her. With her sins she had put aside all personal vanity, and she slopped about her room, unkempt and dishevelled, in her tawdry dressing-gown. She had not taken off her night-dress for four days, nor put on stockings. Her room was littered and untidy. Meanwhile the rain fell with a cruel persistence. You felt that the heavens must at last be empty of water, but still it poured down, straight and heavy, with a maddening iteration, on the iron roof. Everything was damp and clammy. There was mildew on the walls and on the boots that stood on the floor. Through the sleepless nights the mosquitoes droned their angry chant.

“If it would only stop raining for a single day it wouldn’t be so bad,” said Dr Macphail.

They all looked forward to the Tuesday when the boat for San Francisco was to arrive from Sydney. The strain was intolerable. So far as Dr Macphail was concerned, his pity and his resentment were alike extinguished by his desire to be rid of the unfortunate woman. The inevitable must be accepted. He felt he would breathe more freely when the ship had sailed. Sadie Thompson was to be escorted on board by a clerk in the governor’s office. This person called on the Monday evening and told Miss Thompson to be prepared at eleven in the morning. Davidson was with her.

“I’ll see that everything is ready. I mean to come on board with her myself.”

Miss Thompson did not speak.

When Dr Macphail blew out his candle and crawled cautiously under his mosquito curtains, he gave a sigh of relief.

“Well, thank God that’s over. By this time tomorrow she’ll be gone.”

“Mrs Davidson will be glad too. She says he’s wearing himself to a shadow,” said Mrs Macphail. “She’s a different woman.”

“Who?”

“Sadie. I should never have thought it possible. It makes one humble.”

Dr Macphail did not answer, and presently he fell asleep. He was tired out, and he slept more soundly than usual.

He was awakened in the morning by a hand placed on his arm, and, starting up, saw Horn by the side of his bed. The trader put his finger on his mouth to prevent any exclamation from Dr Macphail and beckoned to him to come. As a rule he wore shabby ducks, but now he was barefoot and wore only the lava-lava of the natives. He looked suddenly savage, and Dr Macphail, getting out of bed, saw that he was heavily tattooed. Horn made him a sign to come on to the veranda. Dr Macphail got out of bed and followed the trader out.

“Don’t make a noise,” he whispered. “You’re wanted. Put on a coat and some shoes. Quick.”

Dr Macphail’s first thought was that something had happened to Miss Thompson.

“What is it? Shall I bring my instruments?”

“Hurry, please, hurry.”

Dr Macphail crept back into the bedroom, put on a waterproof over his pyjamas, and a pair of rubber-soled shoes. He rejoined the trader, and together they tiptoed down the stairs. The door leading out to the road was open and at it were standing half a dozen natives.

“What is it?” repeated the doctor.

“Come along with me,” said Horn.

He walked out and the doctor followed him. The natives came after them in a little bunch. They crossed the road and came on to the beach. The doctor saw a group of natives standing round some object at the water’s edge. They hurried along, a couple of dozen yards perhaps, and the natives opened out as the doctor came up. The trader pushed him forwards. Then he saw, lying half in the water and half out, a dreadful object, the body of Davidson. Dr Macphail bent down-he was not a man to lose his head in an emergency-and turned the body over. The throat was cut from ear to ear, and in the right hand was still the razor with which the deed was done.

“He’s quite cold,” said the doctor. “He must have been dead some time.”

“One of the boys saw him lying there on his way to work just now and came and told me. Do you think he did it himself?”

“Yes. Someone ought to go for the police.”

Horn said something in the native tongue, and two youths started off.

“We must leave him here till they come,” said the doctor.

“They mustn’t take him into my house. I won’t have him in my house.”

“You’ll do what the authorities say,” replied the doctor sharply. “In point of fact I expect they’ll take him to the mortuary.”

They stood waiting where they were. The trader took a cigarette from a fold in his lava-lava and gave one to Dr Macphail. They smoked while they stared at the corpse. Dr Macphail could not understand.

“Why do you think he did it?” asked Horn.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. In a little while native police came along, under the charge of a marine, with a stretcher, and immediately afterwards a couple of naval officers and a naval doctor. They managed everything in a businesslike manner.

“What about the wife?” said one of the officers.

“Now that you’ve come I’ll go back to the house and get some things on. I’ll see that it’s broken to her. She’d better not see him till he’s been fixed up a little.”

“I guess that’s right,” said the naval doctor.

When Dr Macphail went back he found his wife nearly dressed.

“Mrs Davidson’s in a dreadful state about her husband,” she said to him as soon as he appeared. “He hasn’t been to bed all night. She heard him leave Miss Thompson’s room at two, but he went out. If he’s been walking about since then he’ll be absolutely dead.”

Dr Macphail told her what had happened and asked her to break the news to Mrs Davidson.

“But why did he do it?” she asked, horror-stricken.

“I don’t know.”

“But I can’t. I can’t.”

“You must.”

She gave him a frightened look and went out. He heard her go into Mrs Davidson’s room. He waited a minute to gather himself together and then began to shave and wash. When he was dressed he sat down on the bed and waited for his wife. At last she came.

“She wants to see him,” she said.

“They’ve taken him to the mortuary. We’d better go down with her. How did she take it?”

“I think she’s stunned. She didn’t cry. But she’s trembling like a leaf.”

“We’d better go at once.”

When they knocked at her door Mrs Davidson came out. She was very pale, but dry-eyed. To the doctor she seemed unnaturally composed. No word was exchanged, and they set out in silence down the road. When they arrived at the mortuary Mrs Davidson spoke.

“Let me go in and see him alone.”

They stood aside. A native opened a door for her and closed it behind her. They sat down and waited. One or two white men came and talked to them in undertones. Dr Macphail told them again what he knew of the tragedy. At last the door was quietly opened and Mrs Davidson came out. Silence fell upon them.

“I’m ready to go back now,” she said.

Her voice was hard and steady. Dr Macphail could not understand the look in her eyes. Her pale face was very stern. They walked back slowly, never saying a word, and at last they came round the bend on the other side of which stood their house. Mrs Davidson gave a gasp, and for a moment they stopped still. An incredible sound assaulted their ears. The gramophone which had been silent for so long was playing, playing ragtime loud and harsh.

“What’s that?” cried Mrs Macphail with horror.

“Let’s go on,” said Mrs Davidson.

They walked up the steps and entered the hall. Miss Thompson was standing at her door, chatting with a sailor. A sudden change had taken place in her. She was no longer the cowed drudge of the last days. She was dressed in all her finery, in her white dress, with the high shiny boots over which her fat legs bulged in their cotton stockings; her hair was elaborately arranged; and she wore that enormous hat covered with gaudy flowers. Her face was painted, her eyebrows were boldly black, and her lips were scarlet. She held herself erect. She was the flaunting queen that they had known at first. As they came in she broke into a loud, jeering laugh; and then, when Mrs Davidson involuntarily stopped, she collected the spittle in her mouth and spat. Mrs Davidson cowered back, and two red spots rose suddenly to her cheeks. Then, covering her face with her hands, she broke away and ran quickly up the stairs. Dr Macphail was outraged. He pushed past the woman into her room.

“What the devil are you doing?” he cried. “Stop that damned machine.”

He went up to it and tore the record off. She turned on him.

“Say, doc, you can that stuff with me. What the hell are you doin’ in my room?”

“What do you mean?” he cried. “What d’you mean?”

She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer.

“You men! You filthy, dirty pigs! You’re all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!”

Dr Macphail gasped. He understood.

RED

THE skipper thrust his hand into one of his trouser pockets and with difficulty, for they were not at the sides but in front and he was a portly man, pulled out a large silver watch. He looked at it and then looked again at the declining sun. The Kanaka at the wheel gave him a glance, but did not speak. The skipper’s eyes rested on the island they were approaching. A white line of foam marked the reef. He knew there was an opening large enough to get his ship through, and when they came a little nearer he counted on seeing it. They had nearly an hour of daylight still before them. In the lagoon the water was deep and they could anchor comfortably. The chief of the village which he could already see among the coconut trees was a friend of the mate’s, and it would be pleasant to go ashore for the night. The mate came forward at that minute and the skipper turned to him.

“We’ll take a bottle of booze along with us and get some girls in to dance,” he said.

“I don’t see the opening,” said the mate.

He was a Kanaka, a handsome, swarthy fellow, with somewhat the look of a later Roman emperor, inclined to stoutness; but his face was fine and clean-cut.

“I’m dead sure there’s one right here,” said the captain, looking through his glasses. “I can’t understand why I can’t pick it up. Send one of the boys up the mast to have a look.”

The mate called one of the crew and gave him the order. The captain watched the Kanaka climb and waited for him to speak. But the Kanaka shouted down that he could see nothing but the unbroken line of foam. The captain spoke Samoan like a native, and he cursed him freely.

“Shall he stay up there?” asked the mate.

“What the hell good does that do?” answered the captain. “The blame fool can’t see worth a cent. You bet your sweet life I’d find the opening if I was up there.”

He looked at the slender mast with anger. It was all very well for a native who had been used to climbing up coconut trees all his life. He was fat and heavy.

“Come down,” he shouted. “You’re no more use than a dead dog. We’ll just have to go along the reef till we find the opening.”

It was a seventy-ton schooner with paraffin auxiliary, and it ran, when there was no head wind, between four and five knots an hour. It was a bedraggled object; it had been painted white a very long time ago, but it was now dirty, dingy, and mottled. It smelt strongly of paraffin and of the copra which was its usual cargo. They were within a hundred feet of the reef now and the captain told the steersman to run along it till they came to the opening. But when they had gone a couple of miles he realized that they had missed it. He went about and slowly worked back again. The white foam of the reef continued without interruption and now the sun was setting. With a curse at the stupidity of the crew the skipper resigned himself to waiting till next morning.

“Put her about,” he said. “I can’t anchor here.”

They went out to sea a little and presently it was quite dark. They anchored. When the sail was furled the ship began to roll a good deal. They said in Apia that one day she would roll right over; and the owner, a German-American who managed one of the largest stores, said that no money was big enough to induce him to go out in her. The cook, a Chinese in white trousers, very dirty and ragged, and a thin white tunic, came to say that supper was ready, and when the skipper went into the cabin he found the engineer already seated at table. The engineer was a long, lean man with a scraggy neck. He was dressed in blue overalls and a sleeveless jersey which showed his thin arms tatooed from elbow to wrist.

“Hell, having to spend the night outside,” said the skipper.

The engineer did not answer, and they ate their supper in silence. The cabin was lit by a dim oil lamp. When they had eaten the canned apricots with which the meal finished the Chink brought them a cup of tea. The skipper lit a cigar and went on the upper deck. The island now was only a darker mass against the night. The stars were very bright. The only sound was the ceaseless breaking of the surf. The skipper sank into a deck-chair and smoked idly. Presently three or four members of the crew came up and sat down. One of them had a banjo and another a concertina. They began to play, and one of them sang. The native song sounded strange on these instruments. Then to the singing a couple began to dance. It was a barbaric dance, savage and primeval, rapid, with quick movements of the hands and feet and contortions of the body; it was sensual, sexual even, but sexual without passion. It was very animal, direct, weird without mystery, natural in short, and one might almost say childlike. At last they grew tired. They stretched themselves on the deck and slept, and all was silent. The skipper lifted himself heavily out of his chair and clambered down the companion. He went into his cabin and got out of his clothes. He climbed into his bunk and lay there. He panted a little in the heat of the night.

But next morning, when the dawn crept over the tranquil sea, the opening in the reef which had eluded them the night before was seen a little to the east of where they lay. The schooner entered the lagoon. There was not a ripple on the surface of the water. Deep down among the coral rocks you saw little coloured fish swim. When he had anchored his ship the skipper ate his breakfast and went on deck. The sun shone from an unclouded sky, but in the early morning the air was grateful and cool. It was Sunday, and there was a feeling of quietness, a silence as though nature were at rest, which gave him a peculiar sense of comfort. He sat, looking at the wooded coast, and felt lazy and well at ease. Presently a slow smile moved his lips and he threw the stump of his cigar into the water.

“I guess I'll go ashore,” he said. “Get the boat out.”

He climbed stiffly down the ladder and was rowed to a little cove. The coconut trees came down to the water’s edge, not in rows, but spaced out with an ordered formality. They were like a ballet of spinsters, elderly but flippant, standing in affected attitudes with the simpering graces of a bygone age. He sauntered idly through them, along a path that could be just seen winding its tortuous way, and it led him presently to a broad creek. There was a bridge across it, but a bridge constructed of single trunks of coconut trees, a dozen of them, placed end to end and supported where they met by a forked branch driven into the bed of the creek. You walked on a smooth, round surface, narrow and slippery, and there was no support for the hand. To cross such a bridge required sure feet and a stout heart. The skipper hesitated. But he saw on the other side, nestling among the trees, a white man’s house; he made up his mind and, rather gingerly, began to walk. He watched his feet carefully, and where one trunk joined on to the next and there was a difference of level, he tottered a little. It was with a gasp of relief that he reached the last tree and finally set his feet on the firm ground of the other side. He had been so intent on the difficult crossing that he never noticed anyone was watching him, and it was with surprise that he heard himself spoken to.

“It takes a bit of nerve to cross these bridges when you’re not used to them.”

He looked up and saw a man standing in front of him. He had evidently come out of the house which he had seen.

“I saw you hesitate,” the man continued, with a smile on his lips, “and I was watching to see you fall in.”

“Not on your life,” said the captain, who had now recovered his confidence.

“I’ve fallen in myself before now. I remember, one evening I came back from shooting, and I fell in, gun and all. Now I get a boy to carry my gun for me.”

He was a man no longer young, with a small beard, now somewhat grey, and a thin face. He was dressed in a singlet, without arms, and a pair of duck trousers. He wore neither shoes nor socks. He spoke English with a slight accent.

“Are you Neilson?” asked the skipper.

“I am.”

“I’ve heard about you. I thought you lived somewheres round here.”

The skipper followed his host into the little bungalow and sat down heavily in the chair which the other motioned him to take. While Neilson went out to fetch whisky and glasses he took a look round the room. It filled him with amazement. He had never seen so many books. The shelves reached from floor to ceiling on all four walls, and they were closely packed. There was a grand piano littered with music, and a large table on which books and magazines lay in disorder. The room made him feel embarrassed. He remembered that Neilson was a queer fellow. No one knew very much about him, although he had been in the islands for so many years, but those who knew him agreed that he was queer. He was a Swede.

“You’ve got one big heap of books here,” he said, when Neilson returned.

“They do no harm,” answered Neilson with a smile.

“Have you read them all?” asked the skipper.

“Most of them.”

“I’m a bit of a reader myself. I have the Saturday Evening Post sent me regler.”

Neilson poured his visitor a good stiff glass of whisky and gave him a cigar. The skipper volunteered a little information.

“I got in last night, but I couldn’t find the opening, so I had to anchor outside. I never been this run before, but my people had some stuff they wanted to bring over here. Gray, d’you know him?”

“Yes, he’s got a store a little way along.”

“Well, there was a lot of canned stuff that he wanted over, an* he’s got some copra. They thought I might just as well come over as lie idle at Apia. I run between Apia and Pago-Pago mostly, but they’ve got smallpox there just now, and there’s nothing stirring.”

He took a drink of his whisky and lit a cigar. He was a taciturn man, but there was something in Neilson that made him nervous, and his nervousness made him talk. The Swede was looking at him with large dark eyes in which there was an expression of faint amusement.

“This is a tidy little place you’ve got here.”

“I’ve done my best with it.”

“You must do pretty well with your trees. They look fine. With copra at the price it is now. I had a bit of a plantation myself once, in Upolu it was, but I had to sell it.”

He looked round the room again, where all those books gave him a feeling of something incomprehensible and hostile.

“I guess you must find it a bit lonesome here though,” he said.

“I’ve got used to it. I’ve been here for twenty-five years.” Now the captain could think of nothing more to say, and he smoked in silence. Neilson had apparently no wish to break it. He looked at his guest with a meditative eye. He was a tall man, more than six feet high, and very stout. His face was red and blotchy, with a network of little purple veins on the cheeks, and his features were sunk into its fatness. His eyes were bloodshot. His neck was buried in rolls of fat. But for a fringe of long curly hair, nearly white, at the back of his head, he was quite bald; and that immense, shiny surface of forehead, which might have given him a false look of intelligence, on the contrary gave him one of peculiar imbecility. He wore a blue flannel shirt, open at the neck and showing his fat chest covered with a mat of reddish hair, and a very old pair of blue serge trousers. He sat in his chair in a heavy ungainly attitude, his great belly thrust forward and his fat legs uncrossed. All elasticity had gone from his limbs. Neilson wondered idly what sort of man he had been in his youth. It was almost impossible to imagine that this creature of vast bulk had ever been a boy who ran about. The skipper finished his whisky, and Neilson pushed the bottle towards him.

“Help yourself.”

The skipper leaned forward and with his great hand seized it.

“And how come you in these parts anyways?” he said.

“Oh, I came out to the islands for my health. My lungs were bad and they said 1 hadn’t a year to live. You see they were wrong.”

“I meant, how come you to settle down right here?”

“I am a sentimentalist.”

“Oh!”

Neilson knew that the skipper had not an idea what he meant, and he looked at him with an ironical twinkle in his dark eyes. Perhaps just because the skipper was so gross and dull a man the whim seized him to talk further.

“You were too busy keeping your balance to notice, when you crossed the bridge, but this spot is generally considered rather pretty.”

“It’s a cute little house you’ve got here.”

“Ah, that wasn’t here when I first came. There was a native hut, with its beehive roof and its pillars, overshadowed by a great tree with red flowers; and the croton bushes, their leaves yellow and red and golden, made a pied fence around it. And then all about were the coconut trees, as fanciful as women, and as vain. They stood at the water’s edge and spent all day looking at their reflections. I was a young man then—Good Heavens, it’s a quarter of a century ago—and I wanted to enjoy all the loveliness of the world in the short time allotted to me before I passed into the darkness. I thought it was the most beautiful spot I had ever seen. The first time I saw it I had a catch at my heart, and I was afraid I was going to cry. I wasn’t more than twenty-five, and though I put the best face I could on it, I didn’t want to die. And somehow it seemed to me that the very beauty of this place made it easier for me to accept my fate. I felt when I came here that all my past life had fallen away, Stockholm and its University, and then Bonn: it all seemed the life of somebody else, as though now at last I had achieved the reality which our doctors of philosophy—I am one myself, you know—had discussed so much. ‘A year,’ I cried to myself. ‘I have a year. I will spend it here and then I am content to die.’

“We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if we weren’t perhaps we should be less wise at fifty.

“Now drink, my friend. Don’t let the nonsense I talk interfere with you.”

He waved his thin hand towards the bottle, and the skipper finished what remained in his glass.

“You ain’t drinking nothin’,” he said, reaching for the whisky.

“I am of a sober habit,” smiled the Swede. “I intoxicate myself in ways which I fancy are more subtle. But perhaps that is only vanity. Anyhow, the effects are more lasting and the results less deleterious.”

“They say there’s a deal of cocaine taken in the States now,” said the captain.

Neilson chuckled.

“But I do not see a white man often,” he continued, “and for once I don’t think a drop of whisky can do me any harm.” He poured himself out a little, added some soda, and took a sip.

“And presently I found out why the spot had such an unearthly loveliness. Here love had tarried for a moment like a migrant bird that happens on a ship in mid-ocean and for a little while folds its tired wings. The fragrance of a beautiful passion hovered over it like the fragrance of hawthorn in May in the meadows of my home. It seems to me that the places where men have loved or suffered keep about them always some faint aroma of something that has not wholly died. It is as though they had acquired a spiritual significance which mysteriously affects those who pass. 1 wish I could make myself clear.” He smiled a little. “Though I cannot imagine that if I did you would understand.”

He paused.

“I think this place was beautiful because here had been loved beautifully.” And now he shrugged his shoulders. “But perhaps it is only that my aesthetic sense is gratified by the happy conjunction of young love and a suitable setting.”

Even a man less thick-witted than the skipper might have been forgiven if he were bewildered by Neil son’s words. For he seemed faintly to laugh at what he said. It was as though he spoke from emotion which his intellect found ridiculous. He had said himself that he was a sentimentalist, and when sentimentality is joined with scepticism there is often the devil to pay.

He was silent for an instant and looked at the captain with eyes in which there was a sudden perplexity.

“You know, I can’t help thinking that I’ve seen you before somewhere or other,” he said.

“I couldn’t say as I remember you,” returned the skipper. “I have a curious feeling as though your face were familiar to me. It’s been puzzling me for some time. But I can’t situate my recollection in any place or at any time.”

The skipper massively shrugged his heavy shoulders.

“It’s thirty years since I first come to the islands. A man can’t figure on remembering all the folk he meets in a while like that.”

The Swede shook his head.

“You know how one sometimes has the feeling that a place one has never been to before is strangely familiar. That’s how I seem to see you.” He gave a whimsical smile. “Perhaps I knew you in some past existence. Perhaps, perhaps you were the master of a galley in ancient Rome and I was a slave at the oar. Thirty years have you been here?”

“Every bit of thirty years.”

“I wonder if you knew a man called Red?”

“Red?”

“That is the only name I’ve ever known him by. I never knew him personally. I never even set eyes on him. And yet I seem to see him more clearly than many men, my brothers, for instance, with whom I passed my daily life for many years. He lives in my imagination with the distinctness of a Paolo Malatesta or a Romeo. But I daresay you have never read Dante or Shakespeare?”

“I can’t say as I have,” said the captain.

Neilson, smoking a cigar, leaned back in his chair and looked vacantly at the ring of smoke which floated in the still air. A smile played on his lips, but his eyes were grave. Then he looked at the captain. There was in his gross obesity something extraordinarily repellent. He had the plethoric self-satisfaction of the very fat. It was an outrage. It set Neilson’s nerves on edge. But the contrast between the man before him and the man he had in mind was pleasant.

“It appears that Red was the most comely thing you ever saw. I’ve talked to quite a number of people who knew him in those days, white men, and they all agree that the first time you saw him his beauty just took your breath away. They called him Red on account of his flaming hair. It had a natural wave and he wore it long. It must have been of that wonderful colour that the pre-Raphaelites raved over. I don’t think he was vain of it, he was much too ingenuous for that, but no one could have blamed him if he had been. He was tall, six feet and an inch or two—in the native house that used to stand here was the mark of his height cut with a knife on the central trunk that supported the roof—and he was made like a Greek god, broad in the shoulders and thin in the flanks; he was like Apollo, with just that soft roundness which Praxiteles gave him, and that suave, feminine grace which has in it something troubling and mysterious. His skin was dazzling white, milky, like satin; his skin was like a woman’s.”

“I had kind of a white skin myself when I was a kiddie,” said the skipper, with a twinkle in his bloodshot eyes.

But Neilson paid no attention to him. He was telling his story now and interruption made him impatient.

“And his face was just as beautiful as his body. He had large blue eyes, very dark, so that some say they were black, and unlike most red-haired people he had dark eyebrows and long dark lashes. His features were perfectly regular and his mouth was like a scarlet wound. He was twenty.”

On these words the Swede stopped with a certain sense of the dramatic. He took a sip of whisky.

“He was unique. There never was anyone more beautiful.

There was no more reason for him than for a wonderful blossom to flower on a wild plant. He was a happy accident of nature.

“One day he landed at that cove into which you must have put this morning. He was an American sailor, and he had deserted from a man-of-war in Apia. He had induced some good-humoured native to give him a passage on a cutter that happened to be sailing from Apia to Safoto, and he had been put ashore here in a dugout. I do not know why he deserted. Perhaps life on a man-of-war with its restrictions irked him, perhaps he was in trouble, and perhaps it was the South Seas and these romantic islands that got into his bones. Every now and then they take a man strangely, and he finds himself like a fly in a spider’s web. It may be that there was a softness of fibre in him, and these green hills with their soft airs, this blue sea, took the northern strength from him as Delilah took the Naza-rite’s. Anyhow, he wanted to hide himself, and he thought he would be safe in this secluded nook till his ship had sailed from Samoa.

“There was a native hut at the cove and as he stood there,, wondering where exactly he should turn his steps, a young girl came out and invited him to enter. He knew scarcely two words of the native tongue and she as little English. But he understood well enough what her smiles meant, and her pretty gestures, and he followed her. He sat down on a mat and she gave him slices of pineapple to eat. I can speak of Red only from hearsay, but I saw the girl three years after he first met her, and she was scarcely nineteen then. You cannot imagine how exquisite she was. She had the passionate grace of the hibiscus and the rich colour. She was rather tall, slim, with the delicate features of her race, and large eyes like pools of still water under the palm trees; her hair, black and curling, fell down her back, and she wore a wreath of scented flowers. Her hands were lovely. They were so small, so exquisitely formed, they gave your heart-strings a wrench. And in those days she laughed easily. Her smile was so delightful that it made your knees shake. Her skin was like a field of ripe corn on a summer day. Good Heavens, how can I describe her? She was too beautiful to be real.

“And these two young things, she was sixteen and he was twenty, fell in love with one another at first sight. That is the real love, not the love that comes from sympathy, common interests, or intellectual community, but love pure and simple.

That is the love that Adam felt for Eve when he awoke and found her in the garden gazing at him with dewy eyes. That is the love that draws the beasts to one another, and the Gods. That is the love that makes the world a miracle. That is the love which gives life its pregnant meaning. You have never heard of the wise, cynical French duke who said that with two lovers there is always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved; it is a bitter truth to which most of us have to resign ourselves; but now and then there are two who love and two who let themselves be loved. Then one might fancy that the sun stands still as it stood when Joshua prayed to the God of Israel.

“And even now after all these years, when I think of these two, so young, so fair, so simple, and of their love, I feel a pang. It tears my heart just as my heart is torn when on certain nights I watch the full moon shining on the lagoon from an unclouded sky. There is always pain in the contemplation of perfect beauty.

“They were children. She was good and sweet and kind. I know nothing of him, and I like to think that then at all events he was ingenuous and frank. I like to think that his soul was as comely as his body. But I daresay he had no more soul than the creatures of the woods and forests who made pipes from reeds and bathed in the mountain streams when the world was young, and you might catch sight of little fawns galloping through the glade on the back of a bearded centaur. A soul is a troublesome possession and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.

“Well, when Red came to the island it had recently been visited by one of those epidemics which the white man has brought to the South Seas, and one third of the inhabitants had died. It seems that the girl had lost all her near kin and she lived now in the house of distant cousins. The household consisted of two ancient crones, bowed and wrinkled, two younger women, and a man and a boy. For a few days he stayed there. But perhaps he felt himself too near the shore, with the possibility that he might fall in with white men who would reveal his hiding-place; perhaps the lovers could not bear that the company of others should rob them for an instant of the delight of being together. One morning they set out, the pair of them, with the few things that belonged to the girl, and walked along a grassy path under the coconuts, till they came to the creek you see. They had to cross the bridge you crossed, and the girl laughed gleefully because he was afraid. She held his hand till they came to the end of the first tree, and then his courage failed him and he had to go back. He was obliged to take off all his clothes before he could risk it, and she carried them over for him on her head. They settled down in the empty hut that stood here. Whether she had any rights over it (land tenure is a complicated business in the islands), or whether the owner had died during the epidemic, I do not know, but anyhow no one questioned them, and they took possession. Their furniture consisted of a couple of grass mats on which they slept, a fragment of looking-glass, and a bowl or two. In this pleasant land that is enough to start housekeeping on.

“They say that happy people have no history, and certainly a happy love has none. They did nothing all day long and yet the days seemed all too short. The girl had a native name, but Red called her Sally. He picked up the easy language very quickly, and he used to lie on the mat for hours while she chattered gaily to him. He was a silent fellow, and perhaps his mind was lethargic. He smoked incessantly the cigarettes which she made him out of the native tobacco and pandanus leaf, and he watched her while with deft fingers she made grass mats. Often natives would come in and tell long stories of the old days when the island was disturbed by tribal wars. Sometimes he would go fishing on the reef, and bring home a basket full of coloured fish. Sometimes at night he would go out with a lantern to catch lobster. There were plantains round the hut and Sally would roast them for their frugal meal. She knew how to make delicious messes from coconuts, and the breadfruit tree by the side of the creek gave them its fruit. On feast-days they killed a little pig and cooked it on hot stones. They bathed together in the creek; and in the evening they went down to the lagoon and paddled about in a dugout, with its great outrigger. The sea was deep blue, wine-coloured at sundown, like the sea of Homeric Greece; but in the lagoon the colour had an infinite variety, aquamarine and amethyst and emerald; and the setting sun turned it for a short moment to liquid gold. Then there was the colour of the coral, brown, white, pink, red, purple; and the shapes it took were marvellous. It was like a magic garden, and the hurrying fish were like butterflies. It strangely lacked reality. Among the coral were pools with a floor of white sand and here, where the water was dazzling clear, it was very good to bathe. Then, cool and happy, they wandered back in the gloaming over the soft grass road to the creek, walking hand in hand, and now the mynah birds filled the coconut trees with their clamour. And then the night, with that great sky shining with gold, that seemed to stretch more widely than the skies of Europe, and the soft airs that blew gently through the open hut, the long night again was all too short. She was sixteen and he was barely twenty. The dawn crept in among the wooden pillars of the hut and looked at those lovely children sleeping in one another’s arms. The sun hid behind the great tattered leaves of the plantains so that it might not disturb them, and then, with playful malice, shot a golden ray, like the outstretched paw of a Persian cat, on their faces. They opened their sleepy eyes and they smiled to welcome another day. The weeks lengthened into months, and a year passed. They seemed to love one another as—I hesitate to say passionately, for passion has in it always a shade of sadness, a touch of bitterness or anguish, but as whole heartedly, as simply and naturally as on that first day on which, meeting, they had recognized that a god was in them.

“If you had asked them I have no doubt that they would have thought it impossible to suppose their love could ever cease. Do we not know that the essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity? And yet perhaps in Red there was already a very little seed, unknown to himself and unsuspected by the girl, which would in time have grown to weariness. For one day one of the natives from the cove told them that some way down the coast at the anchorage was a British whaling-ship.

“‘Gee,’ he said, ‘I wonder if I could make a trade of some nuts and plantains for a pound or two of tobacco.’

“The pandanus cigarettes that Sally made him with untiring hands were strong and pleasant enough to smoke, but they left him unsatisfied; and he yearned on a sudden for real tobacco, hard, rank, and pungent. He had not smoked a pipe for many months. His mouth watered at the thought of it. One would have thought some premonition of harm would have made Sally seek to dissuade him, but love possessed her so completely that it never occurred to her any power on earth could take him from her. They went up into the hills together and gathered a great basket of wild oranges, green, but sweet and juicy; and they picked plantains from around the hut, and coconuts from their trees, and breadfruit and mangoes; and they carried them down to the cove. They loaded the unstable canoe with them, and Red and the native boy who had brought them the news of the ship paddled along outside the reef.

“It was the last time she ever saw him.

“Next day the boy came back alone. He was all in tears. This is the story he told. When after their long paddle they reached the ship and Red hailed it, a white man looked over the side and told them to come on board. They took the fruit they had brought with them and Red piled it up on the deck. The white man and he began to talk, and they seemed to come to some agreement. One of them went below and brought up tobacco. Red took some at once and lit a pipe. The boy imitated the zest with which he blew a great cloud of smoke from his mouth. Then they said something to him and he went into the cabin. Through the open door the boy, watching curiously, saw a bottle brought out and glasses. Red drank and smoked. They seemed to ask him something, for he shook his head and laughed. The man, the first man who had spoken to them, laughed too, and he filled Red’s glass once more. They went on talking and drinking, and presently, growing tired of watching a sight that meant nothing to him, the boy curled himself up on the deck and slept. He was awakened by a kick; and, jumping to his feet, he saw that the ship was slowly sailing out of the lagoon. He caught sight of Red seated at the table, with his head resting heavily on his arms, fast asleep. He made a movement towards him, intending to wake him, but a rough hand seized his arm, and a man, with a scowl and words which he did not understand, pointed to the side. He shouted to Red, but in a moment he was seized and flung overboard. Helpless, he swam round to his canoe which was drifting a little way off, and pushed it on to the reef. He climbed in and, sobbing all the way, paddled back to shore.

“What had happened was obvious enough. The whaler, by desertion or sickness, was short of hands, and the captain when Red came aboard had asked him to sign on; on his refusal he had made him drunk and kidnapped him.

“Sally was beside herself with grief. For three days she screamed and cried. The natives did what they could to comfort her, but she would not be comforted. She would not eat. And then, exhausted, she sank into a sullen apathy. She spent long days at the cove, watching the lagoon, in the vain hope that Red somehow or other would manage to escape. She sat on the white sand, hour after hour, with the tears running down her cheeks, and at night dragged herself wearily back across the creek to the little hut where she had been happy. The people with whom she had lived before Red came to the island wished her to return to them, but she would not; she was convinced that Red would come back, and she wanted him to find her where he had left her. Four months later she was delivered of a still-born child, and the old woman who had come to help her through her confinement remained with her in the hut. All joy was taken from her life. If her anguish with time became less intolerable it was replaced by a settled melancholy. You would not have thought that among these people, whose emotions, though so violent, are very transient, a woman could be found capable of so enduring a passion. She never lost the profound conviction that sooner or later Red would come back. She watched for him, and every time someone crossed this slender little bridge of coconut trees she looked. It might at last be he.”

Neilson stopped talking and gave a faint sigh.

“And what happened to her in the end?” asked the skipper.

Neilson smiled bitterly.

“Oh, three years afterwards she took up with another white man.”

The skipper gave a fat, cynical chuckle.

“That’s generally what happens to them,” he said.

The Swede shot him a look of hatred. He did not know why that gross, obese man excited in him so violent a repulsion. But his thoughts wandered and he found his mind filled with memories of the past. He went back five and twenty years. It was when he first came to the island, weary of Apia, with its heavy drinking, its gambling and coarse sensuality, a sick man, trying to resign himself to the loss of the career which had fired his imagination with ambitious thoughts. He set behind him resolutely all his hopes of making a great name for himself and strove to content himself with the few poor months of careful life which was all that he could count on. He was boarding with a half-caste trader who had a store a couple of miles along the coast at the edge of a native village; and one day, wandering aimlessly along the grassy paths of the coconut groves, he had come upon the hut in which Sally lived. The beauty of the spot had filled him with a rapture so great that it was almost painful, and then he had seen Sally. She was the loveliest creature he had ever seen, and the sadness in those dark, magnificent eyes of hers affected him strangely. The Kanakas were a handsome race, and beauty was not rare among them, but it was the beauty of shapely animals. It was empty. But those tragic eyes were dark with mystery, and you felt in them the bitter complexity of the groping, human soul. The trader told him the story and it moved him.

“Do you think he’ll ever come back?” asked Neilson.

“No fear. Why, it’ll be a couple of years before the ship is paid off, and by then he’ll have forgotten all about her. I bet he was pretty mad when he woke up and found he’d been shanghaied, and I shouldn’t wonder but he wanted to fight somebody. But he’d got to grin and bear it, and I guess in a month he was thinking it the best thing that had ever happened to him that he got away from the island.”

But Neilson could not get the story out of his head. Perhaps because he was sick and weakly, the radiant health of Red appealed to his imagination. Himself an ugly man, insignificant of appearance, he prized very highly comeliness in others. He had never been passionately in love, and certainly he had never been passionately loved. The mutual attraction of those two young things gave him a singular delight. It had the ineffable beauty of the Absolute. He went again to the little hut by the creek. He had a gift for languages and an energetic mind, accustomed to work, and he had already given much time to the study of the local tongue. Old habit was strong in him and he was gathering together material for a paper on the Samoan speech. The old crone who shared the hut with Sally invited him to come in and sit down. She gave him kava to drink and cigarettes to smoke. She was glad to have someone to chat with and while she talked he looked at Sally. She reminded him of the Psyche in the museum at Naples. Her features had the same clear purity of line, and though she had borne a child she had still a virginal aspect.

It was not till he had seen her two or three times that he induced her to speak. Then it was only to ask him if he had seen in Apia a man called Red. Two years had passed since his disappearance, but it was plain that she still thought of him incessantly.

It did not take Neilson long to discover that he was in love with her. It was only by an effort of will now that he prevented himself from going every day to the creek, and when he was not with Sally his thoughts were. At first, looking upon himself as a dying man, he asked only to look at her, and occasionally hear her speak, and his love gave him a wonderful happiness. He exulted in its purity. He wanted nothing from her but the opportunity to weave around her graceful person a web of beautiful fancies. But the open air, the equable temperature, the rest, the simple fare, began to have an unexpected effect on his health. His temperature did not soar at night to such alarming heights, he coughed less and began to put on weight; six months passed without his having a haemorrhage; and on a sudden he saw the possibility that he might live. He had studied his disease carefully, and the hope dawned upon him that with great care he might arrest its course. It exhilarated him to look forward once more to the future. He made plans. It was evident that any active life was out of the question, but he could live on the islands, and the small income he had, insufficient elsewhere, would be ample to keep him. He could grow coconuts; that would give him an occupation; and he would send for his books and a piano; but his quick mind saw that in all this he was merely trying to conceal from himself the desire which obsessed him.

He wanted Sally. He loved not only her beauty, but that dim soul which he divined behind her suffering eyes. He would intoxicate her with his passion. In the end he would make her forget. And in an ecstasy of surrender he fancied himself giving her too the happiness which he had thought never to know again, but had now so miraculously achieved.

He asked her to live with him. She refused. He had expected that and did not let it depress him, for he was sure that sooner or later she would yield. His love was irresistible. He told the old woman of his wishes, and found somewhat to his surprise that she and the neighbours, long aware of them, were strongly urging Sally to accept his offer. After all, every native was glad to keep house for a white man, and Neilson according to the standards of the island was a rich one. The trader with whom he boarded went to her and told her not to be a fool; such an opportunity would not come again, and after so long she could not still believe that Red would ever return. The girl’s resistance only increased Neilson’s desire, and what had been a very pure love now became an agonizing passion. He was determined that nothing should stand in his way. He gave Sally no peace. At last, worn out by his persistence and the persuasions, by turns pleading and angry, of everyone around her, she consented. But the day after when, exultant, he went to see her he found that in the night she had burnt down the hut in which she and Red had lived together. The old crone ran towards him full of angry abuse of Sally, but he waved her aside; it did not matter; they would build a bungalow on the place where the hut had stood. A European house would really be more convenient if he wanted to bring out a piano and a vast number of books.

And so the little wooden house was built in which he had now lived for many years, and Sally became his wife. But after the first few weeks of rapture, during which he was satisfied with what she gave him, he had known little happiness. She had yielded to him, through weariness, but she had only yielded what she set no store on. The soul which he had dimly glimpsed escaped him. He knew that she cared nothing for him. She still loved Red, and all the time she was waiting for his return. At a sign from him, Neilson knew that, notwithstanding his love, his tenderness, his sympathy, his generosity, she would leave him without a moment’s hesitation. She would never give a thought to his distress. Anguish seized him and he battered at that impenetrable self of hers which sullenly resisted him. His love became bitter. He tried to melt her heart with kindness, but it remained as hard as before; he feigned indifference, but she did not notice it. Sometimes he lost his temper and abused her, and then she wept silently. Sometimes he thought she was nothing but a fraud, and that soul simply an invention of his own, and that he could not get into the sanctuary of her heart because there was no sanctuary there. His love became a prison from which he longed to escape, but he had not the strength merely to open the door—that was all it needed—and walk out into the open air. It was torture and at last he became numb and hopeless. In the end the fire burnt itself out and, when he saw her eyes rest for an instant on the slender bridge, it was no longer rage that filled his heart but impatience. For many years now they had lived together bound by the ties of habit and convenience, and it was with a smile that he looked back on his old passion. She was an old woman, for the women on the islands age quickly, and if he had no love for her any more he had tolerance. She left him alone. He was contented with his piano and his books.

His thoughts led him to a desire for words.

“When I look back now and reflect on that brief passionate love of Red and Sally, I think that perhaps they should thank the ruthless fate that separated them when their love seemed still to be at its height. They suffered, but they suffered in beauty. They were spared the real tragedy of love.”

“I don’t know exactly as I get you,” said the skipper.

“The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care? Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.”

But while he was speaking a very extraordinary thing happened. Though he had been addressing the skipper he had not been talking to him, he had been putting his thoughts into words for himself, and with his eyes fixed on the man in front of him he had not seen him. But now an image presented itself to them, an image not of the man he saw, but of another man. It was as though he were looking into one of those distorting mirrors that make you extraordinarily squat or outrageously elongate, but here exactly the opposite took place, and in the obese, ugly old man he caught the shadowy glimpse of a stripling. He gave him now a quick, searching scrutiny. Why had a haphazard stroll brought him just to this place? A sudden tremor of his heart made him slightly breathless. An absurd suspicion seized him. What had occurred to him was impossible, and yet it might be a fact.

“What is your name?” he asked abruptly.

The skipper’s face puckered and he gave a cunning chuckle. He looked then malicious and horribly vulgar.

“It’s such a damned long time since I heard it that I almost forget it myself. But for thirty years now in the islands they’ve always called me Red.”

His huge form shook as he gave a low, almost silent laugh. It was obscene. Neilson shuddered. Red was hugely amused, and from his bloodshot eyes tears ran down his cheeks.

Neilson gave a gasp, for at that moment a woman came in. She was a native, a woman of somewhat commanding presence, stout without being corpulent, dark, for the natives grow darker with age, with very grey hair. She wore a black Mother Hubbard, and its thinness showed her heavy breasts. The moment had come.

THE LETTER

OUTSIDE on the quay the sun beat fiercely. A stream of motors, lorries and buses, private cars and hirelings, sped up and down the crowded thoroughfare, and every chauffeur blew his horn; rickshaws threaded their nimble path amid the throng, and the panting coolies found breath to yell at one another; coolies, carrying heavy bales, sidled along with their quick jog-trot and shouted to the passer-by to make way; itinerant vendors proclaimed their wares. Singapore is the meeting-place of a hundred peoples; and men of all colours, black Tamils, yellow Chinks, brown Malays, Armenians, Jews, and Bengalis, called to one another in raucous tones. But inside the office of Messrs Ripley, Joyce, and Naylor it was pleasantly cool; it was dark after the dusty glitter of the street and agreeably quiet after its unceasing din. Mr Joyce sat in his private room, at the table, with an electric fan turned full on him. He was leaning back, his elbows on the arms of the chair, with the tips of the outstretched fingers of one hand resting neatly against the tips of the outstretched fingers of the other. His gaze rested on the battered volumes of the Law Reports which stood on a long shelf in front of him. On the top of a cupboard were square boxes of japanned tin, on which were painted the names of various clients.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

A Chinese clerk, very neat in his white ducks, opened it.

“Mr Crosbie is here, sir.”

He spoke beautiful English, accenting each word with precision, and Mr Joyce had often wondered at the extent of his vocabulary. Ong Chi Seng was a Cantonese, and he had studied law at Gray’s Inn. He was spending a year or two with Messrs Ripley, Joyce, and Naylor in order to prepare himself for practice on his own account. He was industrious, obliging, and of exemplary character.

“Show him in,” said Mr Joyce.

He rose to shake hands with his visitor and asked him to sit down. The light fell on him as he did so. The face of Mr Joyce remained in shadow. He was by nature a silent man, and now he looked at Robert Crosbie for quite a minute without speaking. Crosbie was a big fellow, well over six feet high, with broad shoulders, and muscular. He was a rubber-planter, hard with the constant exercise of walking over the estate, and with the tennis which was his relaxation when the day’s work was over. He was deeply sunburned. His hairy hands, his feet in clumsy boots were enormous, and Mr Joyce found himself thinking that a blow of that great fist could easily kill the fragile Tamil. But there was no fierceness in his blue eyes; they were confiding and gentle; and his face, with its big, undistinguished features, was open, frank, and honest. But at this moment it bore a look of deep distress. It was drawn and haggard.

“You look as though you hadn’t had much sleep the last night or two,” said Mr Joyce.

“I haven’t.”

Mr Joyce noticed now the old felt hat, with its broad double brim, which Crosbie had placed on the table; and then his eyes travelled to the khaki shorts he wore, showing his red hairy thighs, the tennis shirt open at the neck, without a tie, and the dirty khaki jacket with the ends of the sleeves turned up. He looked as though he had just come in from a long tramp among the rubber trees. Mr Joyce gave a slight frown.

“You must pull yourself together, you know. You must keep your head.”

“Oh, I’m all right.”

“Have you seen your wife today?”

“No, I’m to see her this afternoon. You know, it is a damned shame that they should have arrested her.”

“I think they had to do that,” Mr Joyce answered in his level, soft tone. “I should have thought they’d have let her out on bail.”

“It’s a very serious charge.”

“It is damnable. She did what any decent woman would do in her place. Only, nine women out of ten wouldn’t have the pluck. Leslie’s the best woman in the world. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. Why, hang it all, man, I’ve been married to her for twelve years, do you think I don’t know her? God, if I’d got hold of the man I’d have wrung his neck, I’d have killed him without a moment’s hesitation. So would you.”

“My dear fellow, everybody’s on your side. No one has a good word to say for Hammond. We’re going to get her off. I don’t suppose either the assessors or the judge will go into court without having already made up their minds to bring in a verdict of not guilty.”

“The whole thing’s a farce,” said Crosbie violently. “She ought never to have been arrested in the first place, and then it’s terrible, after all the poor girl’s gone through, to subject her to the ordeal of a trial. There’s not a soul I’ve met since I’ve been in Singapore, man or woman, who hasn’t told me that Leslie was absolutely justified. I think it’s awful to keep her in prison all these weeks.”

“The law is the law. After all, she confesses that she killed the man. It is terrible, and I’m dreadfully sorry for both you and her.”

“I don’t matter a hang,” interrupted Crosbie.

“But the fact remains that murder has been committed, and in a civilized community a trial is inevitable.”

“Is it murder to exterminate noxious vermin? She shot him as she would have shot a mad dog.”

Mr Joyce leaned back again in his chair and once more placed the tips of his ten fingers together. The little construction he formed looked like the skeleton of a roof. He was silent for a moment.

“I should be wanting in my duty as your legal adviser,” he said at last, in an even voice, looking at his client with his cool, brown eyes, “if I did not tell you that there is one point which causes me just a little anxiety. If your wife had only shot Hammond once, the whole thing would be absolutely plain sailing. Unfortunately she fired six times.”

“Her explanation is perfectly simple. In the circumstances anyone would have done the same.”

“I dare say,” said Mr Joyce, “and of course I think the explanation is very reasonable. But it’s no good closing our eyes to the facts. It’s always a good plan to put yourself in another man’s place, and I can’t deny that if I were prosecuting for the Crown that is the point on which I should centre my inquiry.”

“My dear fellow, that’s perfectly idiotic’

Mr Joyce shot a sharp glance at Robert Crosbie. The shadow of a smile hovered over his shapely lips. Crosbie was a good fellow, but he could hardly be described as intelligent.

“I dare say it’s of no importance,” answered the lawyer, “I just thought it was a point worth mentioning. You haven’t got very long to wait now, and when it’s all over I recommend you to go off somewhere with your wife on a trip, and forget all about it. Even though we are almost dead certain to get an acquittal, a trial of that sort is anxious work, and you’ll both want a rest.”

For the first time Crosbie smiled, and his smile strangely changed his face. You forgot the uncouthness and saw only the goodness of his soul.

“I think I shall want it more than Leslie. She’s borne up wonderfully. By God, there’s a plucky little woman for you.”

“Yes, I’ve been very much struck by her self-control,” said the lawyer. “I should never have guessed that she was capable of such determination.”

His duties as her counsel had made it necessary for him to have a good many interviews with Mrs Crosbie since her arrest. Though things had been made as easy as could be for her, the fact remained that she was in gaol, awaiting her trial for murder, and it would not have been surprising if her nerves had failed her. She appeared to bear her ordeal with composure. She read a great deal, took such exercise as was possible, and by favour of the authorities worked at the pillow lace which had always formed the entertainment of her long hours of leisure. When Mr Joyce saw her, she was neatly dressed in cool, fresh, simple frocks, her hair was carefully arranged, and her nails were manicured. Her manner was collected. She was able even to jest upon the little inconveniences of her position. There was something casual about the way in which she spoke of the tragedy, which suggested to Mr Joyce that only her good breeding prevented her from finding something a trifle ludicrous in a situation which was eminently serious. It surprised him, for he had never thought that she had a sense of humour.

He had known her off and on for a good many years. When she paid visits to Singapore she generally came to dine with his wife and himself, and once or twice she had passed a week-end with them at their bungalow by the sea. His wife had spent a fortnight with her on the estate, and had met Geoffrey Hammond several times. The two couples had been on friendly, if not on intimate, terms, and it was on this account that Robert Crosbie had rushed over to Singapore immediately after the catastrophe and begged Mr Joyce to take charge personally of his unhappy wife’s defence.

The story she told him the first time he saw her she had never varied in the smallest detail. She told it as coolly then, a few hours after the tragedy, as she told it now. She told it connectedly, in a level, even voice, and her only sign of confusion was when a slight colour came into her cheeks as she described one or two of its incidents. She was the last woman to whom one would have expected such a thing to happen. She was in the early thirties, a fragile creature, neither short nor tall, and graceful rather than pretty. Her wrists and ankles were very delicate, but she was extremely thin, and you could see the bones of her hands through the white skin, and the veins were large and blue. Her face was colourless, slightly sallow, and her lips were pale. You did not notice the colour of her eyes. She had a great deal of light brown hair, and it had a slight natural wave; it was the sort of hair that with a little touching-up would have been very pretty, but you could not imagine that Mrs Crosbie would think of resorting to any such device. She was a quiet, pleasant, unassuming woman. Her manner was engaging, and if she was not very popular it was because she suffered from a certain shyness. This was comprehensible enough, for the planter’s life is lonely, and in her own house, with people she knew, she was in her quiet way charming. Mrs Joyce, after her fortnight’s stay, had told her husband that Leslie was a very agreeable hostess. There was more in her, she said, than people thought; and when you came to know her you were surprised how much she had read and how entertaining she could be.

She was the last woman in the world to commit murder.

Mr Joyce dismissed Robert Crosbie with such reassuring words as he could find and, once more alone in his office, turned over the pages of the brief. But it was a mechanical action, for all its details were familiar to him. The case was the sensation of the day, and it was discussed in all the clubs, at all the dinner tables, up and down the Peninsula, from Singapore to Penang. The facts that Mrs Crosbie gave were simple. Her husband had gone to Singapore on business, and she was alone for the night. She dined by herself, late, at a quarter to nine, and after dinner sat in the sitting-room working at her lace. It opened on the veranda. There was no one in the bungalow, for the servants had retired to their own quarters at the back of the compound. She was surprised to hear a step on the gravel path in the garden, a booted step, which suggested a white man rather than a native, for she had not heard a motor drive up, and she could not imagine who could be coming to see her at that time of night. Someone ascended the few stairs that led up to the bungalow, walked across the veranda, and appeared at the door of the room in which she sat. At the first moment she did not recognize the visitor. She sat with a shaded lamp, and he stood with his back to the darkness.

“May I come in?” he said.

She did not even recognize the voice.

“Who is it?” she asked.

She worked with spectacles, and she took them off as she spoke.

“Geoff Hammond.”

“Of course. Come in and have a drink.”

She rose and shook hands with him cordially. She was a little surprised to see him, for though he was a neighbour neither she nor Robert had been lately on very intimate terms with him, and she had not seen him for some weeks.

He was the manager of a rubber estate nearly eight miles from theirs, and she wondered why he had chosen this late hour to come and see them.

“Robert’s away,” she said. “He had to go to Singapore for the night.”

Perhaps he thought his visit called for some explanation, for he said:

“I’m sorry. I felt rather lonely tonight, so I thought I’d just come along and see how you were getting on.”

“How on earth did you come? I never heard a car.”

“I left it down the road. I thought you might both be in bed and asleep.”

This was natural enough. The planter gets up at dawn in order to take the roll-call of the workers, and soon after dinner he is glad to go to bed. Hammond’s car was in point of fact found next day a quarter of a mile from the bungalow.

Since Robert was away there was no whisky and soda in the room. Leslie did not call the boy, who was probably asleep, but fetched it herself. Her guest mixed himself a drink and filled his pipe.

Geoff Hammond had a host of friends in the colony. He was at this time in the late thirties, but he had come out as a lad. He had been one of the first to volunteer on the outbreak of war, and had done very well. A wound in the knee caused him to be invalided out of the army after two years, but he returned to the Federated Malay States with a D.S.O. and an M.C. He was one of the best billiard-players in the colony. He had been a beautiful dancer and a fine tennis-player, but though able no longer to dance, and his tennis, with a stiff knee, was not so good as it had been, he had the gift of popularity and was universally liked. He was a tall, good-looking fellow, with attractive blue eyes and a fine head of black, curling hair. Old stagers said his only fault was that he was too fond of the girls, and after the catastrophe they shook their heads and vowed that they had always known this would get him into trouble.

He began now to talk to Leslie about the local affairs, the forthcoming races in Singapore, the price of rubber, and his chances of killing a tiger which had been lately seen in the neighbourhood. She was anxious to finish by a certain date a piece of lace on which she was working, for she wanted to send it home for her mother’s birthday, and so put on her spectacles again, and drew towards her chair the little table on which stood the pillow.

“I wish you wouldn’t wear those great horn-spectacles,” he said. “I don’t know why a pretty woman should do her best to look plain.”

She was a trifle taken aback at this remark. He had never used that tone with her before. She thought the best thing was to make light of it.

“I have no pretensions to being a raving beauty, you know, and if you ask me point-blank, I’m bound to tell you that I don’t care two pins if you think me plain or not.”

“I don’t think you’re plain. I think you’re awfully pretty.”

“Sweet of you,” she answered, ironically. “But in that case I can only think you half-witted.”

He chuckled. But he rose from his chair and sat down in another by her side.

“You’re not going to have the face to deny that you have the prettiest hands in the world,” he said.

He made a gesture as though to take one of them. She gave him a little tap.

“Don’t be an idiot. Sit down where you were before and talk sensibly, or else I shall send you home.”

He did not move.

“Don’t you know that I’m awfully in love with you?” he said.

She remained quite cool.

“I don’t. I don’t believe it for a minute, and even if it were true I don’t want you to say it.”

She was the more surprised at what he was saying, since during the seven years she had known him he had never paid her any particular attention. When he came back from the war they had seen a good deal of one another, and once when he was ill Robert had gone over and brought him back to their bungalow in his car. He had stayed with them for a fortnight. But their interests were dissimilar, and the acquaintance had never ripened into friendship. For the last two or three years they had seen little of him. Now and then he came over to play tennis, now and then they met him at some planter’s who was giving a party, but it often happened that they did not set eyes on him for a month at a time.

Now he took another whisky and soda. Leslie wondered if he had been drinking before. There was something odd about him, and it made her a trifle uneasy. She watched him help himself with disapproval.

“I wouldn’t drink any more if I were you,” she said, good-humouredly still.

He emptied his glass and put it down.

“Do you think I’m talking to you like this because I’m drunk?” he asked abruptly.

“That is the most obvious explanation, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s a lie. I’ve loved you ever since I first knew you. I’ve held my tongue as long as I could, and now it’s got to come out. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She rose and carefully put aside the pillow.

“Good night,” she said.

“I’m not going now.”

At last she began to lose her temper.

“But, you poor fool, don’t you know that I’ve never loved anyone but Robert, and even if I didn’t love Robert you’re the last man I should care for.”

“What do I care? Robert’s away.”

“If you don’t go away this minute I shall call the boys, and have you thrown out.”

“They’re out of earshot.”

She was very angry now. She made a movement as though to go on to the veranda, from which the house-boy would certainly hear her, but he seized her arm.

“Let me go,” she cried furiously.

“Not much. I’ve got you now.”

She opened her mouth and called “Boy, boy,” but with a quick gesture he put his hand over it. Then before she knew what he was about he had taken her in his arms and was kissing her passionately. She struggled, turning her lips away from his burning mouth.

“No, no, no,” she cried. “Leave me alone. I won’t.”

She grew confused about what happened then. All that had been said before she remembered accurately, but now his words assailed her ears through a mist of horror and fear. He seemed to plead for her love. He broke into violent protestations of passion. And all the time he held her in his tempestuous embrace. She was helpless, for he was a strong, powerful man, and her arms were pinioned to her sides; her struggles were unavailing, and she felt herself grow weaker; she was afraid she would faint, and his hot breath on her face made her feel desperately sick. He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her cheeks, her hair. The pressure of his arms was killing her. He lifted her off her feet. She tried to kick him, but he only held her more closely. He was carrying her now. He wasn’t speaking any more, but she knew that his face was pale and his eyes hot with desire. He was taking her into the bedroom. He was no longer a civilized man, but a savage. And as he ran he stumbled against a table which was in the way. His stiff knee made him a little awkward on his feet, and with the burden of the woman in his arms he fell. In a moment she had snatched herself away from him. She ran round the sofa. He was up in a flash, and flung himself towards her. There was a revolver on the desk. She was not a nervous woman, but Robert was to be away for the night, and she had meant to take it into her room when she went to bed. That was why it happened to be there. She was frantic with terror now. She did not know what she was doing. She heard a report. She saw Hammond stagger. He gave a cry. He said something, she didn’t know what. He lurched out of the room on to the veranda. She was in a frenzy now, she was beside herself, she followed him out, yes, that was it, she must have followed him out, though she remembered nothing of it, she followed firing automatically, shot after shot, till the six chambers were empty. Hammond fell down on the floor of the veranda. He crumpled up into a bloody heap.

When the boys, startled by the reports, rushed up, they found her standing over Hammond with the revolver still in her hand and Hammond lifeless. She looked at them for a moment without speaking. They stood in a frightened, huddled bunch. She let the revolver fall from her hand, and without a word turned and went into the sitting-room. They watched her go into her bedroom and turn the key in the lock. They dared not touch the dead body, but looked at it with terrified eyes, talking excitedly to one another in undertones. Then the head-boy collected himself; he had been with them for many years, he was Chinese and a level-headed fellow. Robert had gone into Singapore on his motor-cycle, and the car stood in the garage. He told the seis to get it out; they must go at once to the Assistant District Officer and tell him what had happened. He picked up the revolver and put it in his pocket. The A.D.O., a man called Withers, lived on the outskirts of the nearest town, which was about thirty-five miles away. It took them an hour and a half to reach him. Everyone was asleep, and they had to rouse the boys. Presently Withers came out and they told him their errand. The head-boy showed him the revolver in proof of what he said. The A.D.O. went into his room to dress, sent for his car, and in a little while was following them back along the deserted road. The dawn was just breaking as he reached the Crosbies’ bungalow. He ran up the steps of the veranda, and stopped short as he saw Hammond’s body lying where he fell. He touched the face. It was quite cold.

“Where’s mem?” he asked the house-boy.

The Chinese pointed to the bedroom. Withers went to the door and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again.

“Mrs Crosbie,” he called.

“Who is it?”

“Withers.”

There was another pause. Then the door was unlocked and slowly opened. Leslie stood before him. She had not been to bed, and wore the tea-gown in which she had dined. She stood and looked silently at the A.D.O.

“Your house-boy fetched me,” he said. “Hammond. What have you done?”

“He tried to rape me, and I shot him.”

“My God. I say, you’d better come out here. You must tell me exactly what happened.”

“Not now. I can’t. You must give me time. Send for my husband.”

Withers was a young man, and he did not know exactly what to do in an emergency which was so out of the run of his duties. Leslie refused to say anything till at last Robert arrived. Then she told the two men the story, from which since then, though she had repeated it over and over again, she had never in the slightest degree diverged.

The point to which Mr Joyce recurred was the shooting. As a lawyer he was bothered that Leslie had fired not once, but six times, and the examination of the dead man showed that four of the shots had been fired close to the body. One might almost have thought that when the man fell she stood over him and emptied the contents of the revolver into him. She confessed that her memory, so accurate for all that had preceded, failed her here. Her mind was blank. It pointed to an uncontrollable fury; but uncontrollable fury was the last thing you would have expected from this quiet and demure woman. Mr Joyce had known her a good many years, and had always thought her an unemotional person; during the weeks that had passed since the tragedy her composure had been amazing.

Mr Joyce shrugged his shoulders.

“The fact is, I suppose,” he reflected, “that you can never tell what hidden possibilities of savagery there are in the most respectable of women.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

The Chinese clerk entered and closed the door behind him. He closed it gently, with deliberation, but decidedly, and advanced to the table at which Mr Joyce was sitting.

“May I trouble you, sir, for a few words’ private conversation?” he said. The elaborate accuracy with which the clerk expressed himself always faintly amused Mr Joyce, and now he smiled.

“It’s no trouble, Chi Seng,” he replied.

“The matter on which I desire to speak to you, sir, is delicate and confidential.”

“Fire away.”

Mr Joyce met his clerk’s shrewd eyes. As usual Ong Chi Seng was dressed in the height of local fashion. He wore very shiny patent-leather shoes and gay silk socks. In his black tie was a pearl and ruby pin, and on the fourth finger of his left hand a diamond ring. From the pocket of his neat white coat protruded a gold fountain pen and a gold pencil. He wore a gold wrist-watch, and on the bridge of his nose invisible pince-nez. He gave a little cough.

“The matter has to do with the case R. v. Crosbie, sir.”

“Yes?”

“A circumstance has come to my knowledge, sir, which seems to me to put a different complexion on it.”

“What circumstance?”

“It has come to my knowledge, sir, that there is a letter in existence from the defendant to the unfortunate victim of the tragedy.”

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised. In the course of the last seven years I have no doubt that Mrs Crosbie often had occasion to write to Mr Hammond.”

Mr Joyce had a high opinion of his clerk’s intelligence and his words were designed to conceal his thoughts.

“That is very probable, sir. Mrs Crosbie must have communicated with the deceased frequently, to invite him to dine with her for example, or to propose a tennis game. That was my first thought when the matter was brought to my notice. This letter, however, was written on the day of the late Mr Hammond’s death.”

Mr Joyce did not flicker an eyelash. He continued to look at Ong Chi Seng with the smile of faint amusement with which he generally talked to him.

“Who has told you this?”

“The circumstances were brought to my knowledge, sir, by a friend of mine.”

Mr Joyce knew better than to insist.

“You will no doubt recall, sir, that Mrs Crosbie has stated that until the fatal night she had had no communication with the deceased for several weeks.”

“Have you got the letter?”

“No, sir.”

“What are its contents?”

“My friend gave me a copy. Would you like to peruse it, sir?”

“I should.”

Ong Chi Seng took from an inside pocket a bulky wallet. It was filled with papers, Singapore dollar notes and cigarette cards. From the confusion he presently extracted a half-sheet of thin notepaper and placed it before Mr Joyce. The letter read as follows:

R. will be away for the night. I absolutely must see you. I shall expect you at eleven. I am desperate, and if you don’t come I won’t answer for the consequences. Don’t drive up.-L.

It was written in the flowing hand which the Chinese were taught at the foreign schools. The writing, so lacking in character, was oddly incongruous with the ominous words.

“What makes you think that this note was written by Mrs Crosbie?”

“I have every confidence in the veracity of my informant, sir,” replied Ong Chi Seng. “And the matter can very easily be put to the proof. Mrs Crosbie will, no doubt, be able to tell you at once whether she wrote such a letter or not.”

Since the beginning of the conversation Mr Joyce had not taken his eyes off the respectable countenance of his clerk. He wondered now if he discerned in it a faint expression of mockery.

“It is inconceivable that Mrs Crosbie should have written such a letter,” said Mr Joyce.

“If that is your opinion, sir, the matter is of course ended. My friend spoke to me on the subject only because he thought, as I was in your office, you might like to know of the existence of this letter before a communication was made to the Deputy Public Prosecutor.”

“Who has the original?” asked Mr Joyce sharply.

Ong Chi Seng made no sign that he perceived in this question and its manner a change of attitude.

“You will remember, sir, no doubt, that after the death of Mr Hammond it was discovered that he had had relations with a Chinese woman. The letter is at present in her possession.”

That was one of the things which had turned public opinion most vehemently against Hammond. It came to be known that for several months he had had a Chinese woman living in his house.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Indeed everything had been said and each understood the other perfectly.

“I’m obliged to you, Chi Seng. I will give the matter my consideration.”

“Very good, sir. Do you wish me to make a communication to that effect to my friend?”

“I dare say it would be as well if you kept in touch with him,” Mr Joyce answered with gravity. “Yes, sir.”

The clerk noiselessly left the room, shutting the door again with deliberation, and left Mr Joyce to his reflections. He stared at the copy, in its neat, impersonal writing, of Leslie’s letter. Vague suspicions troubled him. They were so disconcerting that he made an effort to put them out of his mind. There must be a simple explanation of the letter, and Leslie without doubt could give it at once, but, by heaven, an explanation was needed. He rose from his chair, put the letter in his pocket, and took his topee. When he went out Ong Chi Seng was busily writing at his desk.

“I’m going out for a few minutes, Chi Seng,” he said.

“Mr George Reed is coming by appointment at twelve o’clock, sir. Where shall I say you’ve gone?”

Mr Joyce gave him a thin smile.

“You can say that you haven’t the least idea.”

But he knew perfectly well that Ong Chi Seng was aware that he was going to the gaol. Though the crime had been committed in Belanda and the trial was to take place at Belanda Bharu, since there was in the gaol no convenience for the detention of a white woman Mrs Crosbie had been brought to Singapore.

When she was led into the room in which he waited she held out her thin, distinguished hand, and gave him a pleasant smile. She was as ever neatly and simply dressed, and her abundant, pale hair was arranged with care.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning,” she said, graciously.

She might have been in her own house, and Mr Joyce almost expected to hear her call the boy and tell him to bring the visitor a gin pahit.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’m in the best of health, thank you.” A flicker of amusement flashed across her eyes. “This is a wonderful place for a rest cure.”

The attendant withdrew and they were left alone.

“Do sit down,” said Leslie.

He took a chair. He did not quite know how to begin. She was so cool that it seemed almost impossible to say to her the thing he had come to say. Though she was not pretty there was something agreeable in her appearance. She had elegance, but it was the elegance of good breeding in which there was nothing of the artifice of society. You had only to look at her to know what sort of people she had and what kind of surroundings she had lived in. Her fragility gave her a singular refinement. It was impossible to associate her with the vaguest idea of grossness.

“I’m looking forward to seeing Robert this afternoon,” she said, in her good-humoured, easy voice. (It was a pleasure to hear her speak, her voice and her accent were so distinctive of her class.) “Poor dear, it’s been a great trial to his nerves. I’m thankful it’ll all be over in a few days.”

“It’s only five days now.”

“I know. Each morning when I awake I say to myself, ‘one less.’” She smiled then. “Just as I used to do at school and the holidays were coming.”

“By the way, am I right in thinking that you had no communication whatever with Hammond for several weeks before the catastrophe?”

“I’m quite positive of that. The last time we met was at a tennis-party at the MacFarrens. I don’t think I said more than two words to him. They have two courts, you know, and we didn’t happen to be in the same sets.”

“And you haven’t written to him?”

“Oh, no.”

“Are you quite sure of that?”

“Oh, quite,” she answered, with a little smile. “There was nothing I should write to him for except to ask him to dine or to play tennis, and I hadn’t done either for months.”

“At one time you’d been on fairly intimate terms with him. How did it happen that you had stopped asking him to anything?”

Mrs Crosbie shrugged her thin shoulders.

“One gets tired of people. We hadn’t anything very much in common. Of course, when he was ill Robert and I did everything we could for him, but the last year or two he’d been quite well, and he was very popular. He had a good many calls on his time, and there didn’t seem to be any need to shower invitations upon him.”

“Are you quite certain that was all?”

Mrs Crosbie hesitated for a moment.

“Well, I may just as well tell you. It had come to our ears that he was living with a Chinese woman, and Robert said he wouldn’t have him in the house. I had seen her myself.”

Mr Joyce was sitting in a straight-backed arm-chair, resting his chin on his hand, and his eyes were fixed on Leslie. Was it his fancy that, as she made this remark, her black pupils were filled on a sudden, for the fraction of a second, with a dull red light? The effect was startling. Mr Joyce shifted in his chair. He placed the tips of his ten fingers together. He spoke very slowly, choosing his words.

“I think I should tell you that there is in existence a letter in your handwriting to Geoff Hammond.”

He watched her closely. She made no movement, nor did her face change colour, but she took a noticeable time to reply.

“In the past I’ve often sent him little notes to ask him to something or other, or to get me something when I knew he was going to Singapore.”

“This letter asks him to come and see you because Robert was going to Singapore.”

“That’s impossible. I never did anything of the kind.”

“You’d better read it for yourself.”

He took it out of his pocket and handed it to her. She gave it a glance and with a smile of scorn handed it back to him.

“That’s not my handwriting.”

“I know, it’s said to be an exact copy of the original.”

She read the words now, and as she read a horrible change came over her. Her colourless face grew dreadful to look at. It turned green. The flesh seemed on a sudden to fall away and her skin was tightly stretched over the bones. Her lips receded, showing her teeth, so that she had the appearance of making a grimace. She stared at Mr Joyce with eyes that started from their sockets. He was looking now at a gibbering death’s head.

“What does it mean?” she whispered.

Her mouth was so dry that she could utter no more than a hoarse sound. It was no longer a human voice.

“That is for you to say,” he answered.

“I didn’t write it. I swear I didn’t write it.”

“Be very careful what you say. If the original is in your handwriting it would be useless to deny it.”

“It would be a forgery.”

“It would be difficult to prove that. It would be easy to prove that it was genuine.”

A shiver passed through her lean body. But great beads of sweat stood on her forehead. She took a handkerchief from her bag and wiped the palms of her hands. She glanced at the letter again and gave Mr Joyce a sidelong look.

“It’s not dated. If I had written it and forgotten all about it, it might have been written years ago. If you’ll give me time, I’ll try and remember the circumstances.”

“I noticed there was no date. If this letter were in the hands of the prosecution they would cross-examine the boys. They would soon find out whether someone took a letter to Hammond on the day of his death.”

Mrs Crosbie clasped her hands violently and swayed in her chair so that he thought she would faint.

“I swear to you that I didn’t write that letter.”

Mr Joyce was silent for a little while. He took his eyes from her distraught face, and looked down on the floor. He was reflecting.

“In these circumstances we need not go into the matter further,” he said slowly, at last breaking the silence. “If the possessor of this letter sees fit to place it in the hands of the prosecution you will be prepared.”

His words suggested that he had nothing more to say to her, but he made no movement of departure. He waited. To himself he seemed to wait a very long time. He did not look at Leslie, but he was conscious that she sat very still. She made no sound. At last it was he who spoke.

“If you have nothing more to say to me I think I’ll be getting back to my office.”

“What would anyone who read the letter be inclined to think that it meant?” she asked then.

“He’d know that you had told a deliberate lie,” answered Mr Joyce sharply.

“When?”

“You have stated definitely that you had had no communication with Hammond for at least three months.”

“The whole thing has been a terrible shock to me. The events of that dreadful night have been a nightmare. It’s not very strange if one detail has escaped my memory.”

“It would be unfortunate, when your memory has reproduced so exactly every particular of your interview with Hammond, that you should have forgotten so important a point as that he came to see you in the bungalow on the night of his death at your express desire.”

“I hadn’t forgotten. After what happened I was afraid to mention it. I thought you’d none of you believe my story if I admitted that he’d come at my invitation. I dare say it was stupid of me; but I lost my head, and after I’d said once that I’d had no communication with Hammond I was obliged to stick to it.”

By now Leslie had recovered her admirable composure, and she met Mr Joyce’s appraising glance with candour. Her gentleness was very disarming.

“You will be required to explain, then, why you asked Hammond to come and see you when Robert was away for the night.”

She turned her eyes full on the lawyer. He had been mistaken in thinking them insignificant, they were rather fine eyes, and unless he was mistaken they were bright now with tears. Her voice had a little break in it.

“It was a surprise I was preparing for Robert. His birthday is next month. I knew he wanted a new gun and you know I’m dreadfully stupid about sporting things. I wanted to talk to Geoff about it. I thought I’d get him to order it for me.”

“Perhaps the terms of the letter are not very clear to your recollection. Will you have another look at it?”

“No, I don’t want to,” she said quickly.

“Does it seem to you the sort of letter a woman would write to a somewhat distant acquaintance because she wanted to consult him about buying a gun?”

“I dare say it’s rather extravagant and emotional. I do express myself like that, you know. I’m quite prepared to admit it’s very silly.” She smiled. “And after all, Geoff Hammond wasn’t quite a distant acquaintance. When he was ill I’d nursed him like a mother. I asked him to come when Robert was away, because Robert wouldn’t have him in the house.”

Mr Joyce was tired of sitting so long in the same position. He rose and walked once or twice up and down the room, choosing the words he proposed to say; then he leaned over the back of the chair in which he had been sitting. He spoke slowly in a tone of deep gravity.

“Mrs Crosbie, I want to talk to you very, very seriously. This case was comparatively plain sailing. There was only one point which seemed to me to require explanation: as far as I could judge, you had fired no less than four shots into Hammond when he was lying on the ground. It was hard to accept the possibility that a delicate, frightened, and habitually self-controlled woman, of gentle nature and refined instincts, should have surrendered to an absolutely uncontrolled frenzy. But of course it was admissible. Although Geoffrey Hammond was much liked and on the whole thought highly of, I was prepared to prove that he was the sort of man who might be guilty of the crime which in justification of your act you accused him of. The fact, which was discovered after his death, that he had been living with a Chinese woman gave us something very definite to go upon. That robbed him of any sympathy which might have been felt for him. We made up our minds to make use of the odium which such a connexion cast upon him in the minds of all respectable people. I told your husband this morning that I was certain of an acquittal, and I wasn’t just telling him that to give him heart. I do not believe the assessors would have left the court.”

They looked into one another’s eyes. Mrs Crosbie was strangely still. She was like a little bird paralysed by the fascination of a snake. He went on in the same quiet tones.

“But this letter has thrown an entirely different complexion on the case. I am your legal adviser, I shall represent you in court. I take your story as you tell it me, and I shall conduct your defence according to its terms. It may be that I believe your statements, and it may be that I doubt them. The duty of counsel is to persuade the court that the evidence placed before it is not such as to justify it in bringing in a verdict of guilty, and any private opinion he may have of the guilt or innocence of his client is entirely beside the point.”

He was astonished to see in Leslie’s eyes the flicker of a smile. Piqued, he went on somewhat dryly:

“You’re not going to deny that Hammond came to your house at your urgent, and I may even say, hysterical invitation?”

Mrs Crosbie, hesitating for an instant, seemed to consider.

“They can prove that the letter was taken to his bungalow by one of the house-boys. He rode over on his bicycle.”

“You mustn’t expect other people to be stupider than you. The letter will put them on the track of suspicions which have entered nobody’s head. I will not tell you what I personally thought when I saw the copy. I do not wish you to tell me anything but what is needed to save your neck.”

Mrs Crosbie gave a shrill cry. She sprang to her feet, white with terror.

“You don’t think they’d hang me?”

“If they came to the conclusion that you hadn’t killed Hammond in selfdefence, it would be the duty of the assessors to bring in a verdict of guilty. The charge is murder. It would be the duty of the judge to sentence you to death.”

“But what can they prove?” she gasped.

“I don’t know what they can prove. You know. I don’t want to know. But if their suspicions are aroused, if they begin to make inquiries, if the natives are questioned-what is it that can be discovered?”

She crumpled up suddenly. She fell on the floor before he could catch her. She had fainted. He looked round the room for water, but there was none there, and he did not want to be disturbed. He stretched her out on the floor, and kneeling beside her waited for her to recover. When she opened her eyes he was disconcerted by the ghastly fear that he saw in them.

“Keep quite still,” he said. “You’ll be better in a moment.”

“You won’t let them hang me,” she whispered.

She began to cry, hysterically, while in undertones he sought to quieten her.

“For goodness sake pull yourself together,” he said.

“Give me a minute.”

Her courage was amazing. He could see the effort she made to regain her self-control, and soon she was once more calm.

“Let me get up now.”

He gave her his hand and helped her to her feet. Taking her arm, he led her to the chair. She sat down wearily.

“Don’t talk to me for a minute or two,” she said.

“Very well.”

When at last she spoke it was to say something which he did not expect. She gave a little sigh.

“I’m afraid I’ve made rather a mess of things,” she said.

He did not answer, and once more there was a silence.

“Isn’t it possible to get hold of the letter?” she said at last.

“I do not think anything would have been said to me about it if the person in whose possession it is was not prepared to sell it.”

“Who’s got it?”

“The Chinese woman who was living in Hammond’s house.”

A spot of colour flickered for an instant on Leslie’s cheek-bones.

“Does she want an awful lot for it?”

“I imagine that she has a very shrewd idea of its value. I doubt if it would be possible to get hold of it except for a very large sum.”

“Are you going to let me be hanged?”

“Do you think it’s so simple as all that to secure possession of an unwelcome piece of evidence? It’s no different from suborning a witness. You have no right to make any such suggestion to me.”

“Then what is going to happen to me?”

“Justice must take its course.”

She grew very pale. A little shudder passed through her body.

“I put myself in your hands. Of course I have no right to ask you to do anything that isn’t proper.”

Mr Joyce had not bargained for the little break in her voice which her habitual self-restraint made quite intolerably moving. She looked at him with humble eyes, and he thought that if he rejected their appeal they would haunt him for the rest of his life. After all, nothing could bring poor Hammond back to life again. He wondered what really was the explanation of that letter. It was not fair to conclude from it that she had killed Hammond without provocation. He had lived in the East a long time and his sense of professional honour was not perhaps so acute as it had been twenty years before. He stared at the floor. He made up his mind to do something which he knew was unjustifiable, but it

stuck in his throat and he felt dully resentful towards Leslie. It embarrassed

him a little to speak.

“I don’t know exactly what your husband’s circumstances are?”

Flushing a rosy red, she shot a swift glance at him.

“He has a good many tin shares and a small share in two or three rubber estates. I suppose he could raise money.”

“He would have to be told what it was for.”

She was silent for a moment. She seemed to think.

“He’s in love with me still. He would make any sacrifice to save me. Is there any need for him to see the letter?”

Mr Joyce frowned a little, and, quick to notice, she went on.

“Robert is an old friend of yours. I’m not asking you to do anything for me, I’m asking you to save a rather simple, kind man who never did you any harm from all the pain that’s possible.”

Mr Joyce did not reply. He rose to go and Mrs Crosbie, with the grace that was natural to her, held out her hand. She was shaken by the scene, and her look was haggard, but she made a brave attempt to speed him with courtesy.

“It’s so good of you to take all this trouble for me. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am.”

Mr Joyce returned to his office. He sat in his own room, quite still, attempting to do no work, and pondered. His imagination brought him many strange ideas. He shuddered a little. At last there was the discreet knock on the door which he was expecting. Ong Chi Seng came in.

“I was just going out to have my tiffin, sir,” he said.

“All right.”

“I didn’t know if there was anything you wanted before I went, sir.”

“I don’t think so. Did you make another appointment for Mr Reed?”

“Yes, sir. He will come at three o’clock.”

“Good.”

Ong Chi Seng turned away, walked to the door, and put his long slim fingers on the handle. Then, as though on an afterthought, he turned back.

“Is there anything you wish me to say to my friend, sir?”

Although Ong Chi Seng spoke English so admirably he had still a difficulty with the letter R, and he pronounced it “fliend’.

“What friend?”

“About the letter Mrs Crosbie wrote to Hammond deceased, sir.”

“Oh! I’d forgotten about that. I mentioned it to Mrs Crosbie and she denies having written anything of the sort. It’s evidently a forgery.”

Mr Joyce took the copy from his pocket and handed it to Ong Chi Seng. Ong Chi Seng ignored the gesture.

“In that case, sir, I suppose there would be no objection if my fliend delivered the letter to the Deputy Public Prosecutor.”

“None. But I don’t quite see what good that would do your friend.”

“My fliend, sir, thought it was his duty in the interests of justice.”

“I am the last man in the world to interfere with anyone who wishes to do his duty, Chi Seng.”

The eyes of the lawyer and of the Chinese clerk met. Not the shadow of a smile hovered on the lips of either, but they understood each other perfectly.

“I quite understand, sir,” said Ong Chi Seng, “but from my study of the case R. v. Crosbie I am of opinion that the production of such a letter would be damaging to our client.”

“I have always had a very high opinion of your legal acumen, Chi Seng.”

“It had occurred to me, sir, that if I could persuade my fliend to induce the Chinese woman who has the letter to deliver it into our hands it would save a great deal of trouble.”

Mr Joyce idly drew faces on his blotting-paper.

“I suppose your friend is a business man. In what circumstances do you think he would be induced to part with the letter?”

“He has not got the letter. The Chinese woman has the letter. He is only a relation of the Chinese woman. She is ignorant woman; she did not know the value of that letter till my friend told her.”

“What value did he put on it?”

“Ten thousand dollars, sir.”

“Good God! Where on earth do you suppose Mrs Crosbie can get ten thousand dollars! I tell you the letter’s a forgery.”

He looked up at Ong Chi Seng as he spoke. The clerk was unmoved by the outburst. He stood at the side of the desk, civil, cool, and observant.

“Mr Crosbie owns an eighth share of the Betong Rubber Estate and a sixth share of the Selantan River Rubber Estate. I have a fliend who will lend him the money on the security of-his property.”

“You have a large circle of acquaintance, Chi Seng.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you can tell them all to go to hell. I would never advise Mr Crosbie to give a penny more than five thousand for a letter that can be very easily explained.”

“The Chinese woman does not want to sell the letter, sir. My fliend took a long time to persuade her. It is useless to offer her less than the sum mentioned.”

Mr Joyce looked at Ong Chi Seng for at least three minutes. The clerk bore the searching scrutiny without embarrassment. He stood in a respectful attitude with downcast eyes. Mr Joyce knew his man. Clever fellow, Chi Seng, he thought, I wonder how much he’s going to get out of it.

“Ten thousand dollars is a very large sum.”

“Mr Crosbie will certainly pay it rather than see his wife hanged, sir.”

Again Mr Joyce paused. What more did Chi Seng know than he had said? He must be pretty sure of his ground if he was obviously so unwilling to bargain. That sum had been fixed because whoever it was that was managing the affair knew it was the largest amount that Robert Crosbie could raise.

“Where is the Chinese woman now?” asked Mr Joyce.

“She is staying at the house of my fliend, sir.”

“Will she come here?”

“I think it more better if you go to her, sir. I can take you to the house tonight and she will give you the letter. She is very ignorant woman, sir, and she does not understand cheques.”

“I wasn’t thinking of giving her a cheque. I will bring bank notes with me.”

“It would only be waste of valuable time to bring less than ten thousand dollars, sir.”

“I quite understand.”

“I will go and tell my fliend after I have had my tiffin, sir.”

“Very good. You’d better meet me outside the club at ten o’clock tonight.”

“With pleasure, sir,” said Ong Chi Seng.

He gave Mr Joyce a little bow and left the room. Mr Joyce went out to have luncheon, too. He went to the club and here, as he had expected, he saw Robert Crosbie. He was sitting at a crowded table, and as he passed him, looking for a place, Mr Joyce touched him on the shoulder.

“I’d like a word or two with you before you go,” he said.

“Right you are. Let me know when you’re ready.”

Mr Joyce had made up his mind how to tackle him. He played a rubber of bridge after luncheon in order to allow time for the club to empty itself. He did not want on this particular matter to see Crosbie in his office. Presently Crosbie came into the card-room and looked on till the game was finished. The other players went on their various affairs, and the two were left alone.

“A rather unfortunate thing has happened, old man,” said Mr Joyce, in a tone which he sought to render as casual as possible. “It appears that your wife sent a letter to Hammond asking him to come to the bungalow on the night he was killed.”

“But that’s impossible,” cried Crosbie. “She’s always stated that she had had no communication with Hammond. I know from my own knowledge that she hadn’t set eyes on him for a couple of months.”

“The fact remains that the letter exists. It’s in the possession of the Chinese woman Hammond was living with. Your wife meant to give you a present on your birthday, and she wanted Hammond to help her to get it. In the emotional excitement that she suffered from after the tragedy, she forgot all about it, and having once denied having any communication with Hammond she was afraid to say that she had made a mistake. It was, of course, very unfortunate, but I dare say it was not unnatural.”

Crosbie did not speak. His large, red face bore an expression of complete bewilderment, and Mr Joyce was at once relieved and exasperated by his lack of comprehension. He was a stupid man, and Mr Joyce had no patience with stupidity. But his distress since the catastrophe had touched a soft spot in the lawyer’s heart; and Mrs Crosbie had struck the right note when she asked him to help her, not for her sake, but for her husband’s.

“I need not tell you that it would be very awkward if this letter found its way into the hands of the prosecution. Your wife has lied, and she would be asked to explain the lie. It alters things a little if Hammond did not intrude, an unwanted guest, but came to your house by invitation. It would be easy to arouse in the assessors a certain indecision of mind.”

Mr Joyce hesitated. He was face to face now with his decision. If it had been a time for humour, he could have smiled at the reflection that he was taking so grave a step, and that the man for whom he was taking it had not the smallest conception of its gravity. If he gave the matter a thought, he probably imagined that what Mr Joyce was doing was what any lawyer did in the ordinary run of business.

“My dear Robert, you are not only my client, but my friend. I think we must get hold of that letter. It’ll cost a good deal of money. Except for that I should have preferred to say nothing to you about it.”

“How much?”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“That’s a devil of a lot. With the slump and one thing and another it’ll take just about all I’ve got.”

“Can you get it at once?”

“I suppose so. Old Charlie Meadows will let me have it on my tin shares and on those two estates I’m interested in.”

“Then will you?”

“Is it absolutely necessary?”

“If you want your wife to be acquitted.”

Crosbie grew very red. His mouth sagged strangely.

“But …” he could not find words, his face now was purple. “But I don’t understand. She can explain. You don’t mean to say they’d find her guilty? They couldn’t hang her for putting a noxious vermin out of the way.”

“Of course they wouldn’t hang her. They might only find her guilty of manslaughter. She’d probably get off with two or three years.”

Crosbie started to his feet and his red face was distraught with horror.

“Three years.”

Then something seemed to dawn in that slow intelligence of his. His mind was darkness across which shot suddenly a flash of lightning, and though the succeeding darkness was as profound, there remained the memory of something not seen but perhaps just descried. Mr Joyce saw that Crosbie’s big red hands, coarse and hard with all the odd jobs he had set them to, trembled.

“What was the present she wanted to make me?”

“She says she wanted to give you a new gun.”

Once more that great red face flushed a deeper red.

“When have you got to have the money ready?”

There was something odd in his voice now. It sounded as though he spoke with invisible hands clutching at his throat.

“At ten o’clock tonight. I thought you could bring it to my office at about six.”

“Is the woman coming to you?”

“No, I’m going to her.”

“I’ll bring the money. I’ll come with you.”

Mr Joyce looked at him sharply.

“Do you think there’s any need for you to do that? I think it would be better if you left me to deal with this matter by myself.”

“It’s my money, isn’t it? I’m going to come.”

Mr Joyce shrugged his shoulders. They rose and shook hands. Mr Joyce looked at him curiously.

At ten o’clock they met in the empty club.

“Everything all right?” asked Mr Joyce.

“Yes. I’ve got the money in my pocket.”

“Let’s go then.”

They walked down the steps. Mr Joyce’s car was waiting for them in the square, silent at that hour, and as they came to it Ong Chi Seng stepped out of the shadow of a house. He took his seat beside the driver and gave him a direction. They drove past the Hotel de l’Europe and turned up by the Sailor’s Home to get into Victoria Street. Here the Chinese shops were still open, idlers lounged about, and in the roadway rickshaws and motor-cars and gharries gave a busy air to the scene. Suddenly their car stopped and Chi Seng turned round.

“I think it more better if we walk here, sir,” he said.

They got out and he went on. They followed a step or two behind. Then he asked them to stop.

“You wait here, sir. I go in and speak to my fliend.”

He went into a shop, open to the street, where three or four Chinese were standing behind the counter. It was one of those strange shops where nothing was on view, and you wondered what it was they sold there. They saw him address a stout man in a duck suit with a large gold chain across his breast, and the man shot a quick glance out into the night. He gave Chi Seng a key and Chi Seng came out. He beckoned to the two men waiting and slid into a doorway at the side of the shop. They followed him and found themselves at the foot of a flight of stairs.

“If you wait a minute I will light a match,” he said, always resourceful. “You come upstairs, please.”

He held a Japanese match in front of them, but it scarcely dispelled the darkness and they groped their way up behind him. On the first floor he unlocked a door and going in lit a gas-jet.

“Come in, please,” he said.

It was a small square room, with one window, and the only furniture consisted of two low Chinese beds covered with matting. In one corner was a large chest, with an elaborate lock, and on this stood a shabby tray with an opium pipe on it and a lamp. There was in the room the faint, acrid scent of the drug. They sat down and Ong Chi Seng offered them cigarettes. In a moment the door was opened by the fat Chinaman whom they had seen behind the counter. He bade them good evening in very good English, and sat down by the side of his fellow-countryman.

“The Chinese woman is just coming,” said Chi Seng.

A boy from the shop brought in a tray with a teapot and cups and the Chinaman offered them a cup of tea. Crosbie refused. The Chinese talked to one another in undertones, but Crosbie and Mr Joyce were silent. At last there was the sound of a voice outside; someone was calling in a low tone; and the Chinaman went to the door. He opened it, spoke a few words, and ushered a woman in. Mr Joyce looked at her. He had heard much about her since Hammond’s death, but he had never seen her. She was a stoutish person, not very young, with a broad, phlegmatic face, she was powdered and rouged and her eyebrows were a thin black line, but she gave you the impression of a woman of character. She wore a pale blue jacket and a white skirt, her costume was not quite European nor quite Chinese, but on her feet were little Chinese silk slippers. She wore heavy gold chains round her neck, gold bangles on her wrists, gold ear-rings, and elaborate gold pins in her black hair. She walked in slowly, with the air of a woman sure of herself, but with a certain heaviness of tread, and sat down on the bed beside Ong Chi Seng. He said something to her and nodding she gave an incurious glance at the two white men.

“Has she got the letter?” asked Mr Joyce.

“Yes, sir.”

Crosbie said nothing, but produced a roll of five-hundred-dollar notes. He counted out twenty and handed them to Chi Seng.

“Will you see if that is correct?”

The clerk counted them and gave them to the fat Chinaman.

“Quite correct, sir.”

The Chinaman counted them once more and put them in his pocket. He spoke again to the woman and she drew from her bosom a letter. She gave it to Chi Seng who cast his eyes over it.

“This is the right document, sir,” he said, and was about to give it to Mr Joyce when Crosbie took it from him.

“Let me look at it,” he said.

Mr Joyce watched him read and then held out his hand for it.

“You’d better let me have it.”

Crosbie folded it up deliberately and put it in his pocket.

“No, I’m going to keep it myself. It’s cost me enough money.”

Mr Joyce made no rejoinder. The three Chinese watched the little passage, but what they thought about it, or whether they thought, it was impossible to tell from their impassive countenances. Mr Joyce rose to his feet.

“Do you want me any more tonight, sir?” said Ong Chi Seng.

“No.” He knew that the clerk wished to stay behind in order to get his agreed share of the money, and he turned to Crosbie. “Are you ready?”

Crosbie did not answer, but stood up. The Chinaman went to the door and opened it for them. Chi Seng found a bit of candle and lit it in order to light them down, and the two Chinese accompanied them to the street. They left the woman sitting quietly on the bed smoking a cigarette. When they reached the street the Chinese left them and went once more upstairs.

“What are you going to do with that letter?” asked Mr Joyce.

“Keep it.”

They walked to where the car was waiting for them and here Mr Joyce offered his friend a lift. Crosbie shook his head.

“I’m going to walk.” He hesitated a little and shuffled his feet. “I went to Singapore on the night of Hammond’s death partly to buy a new gun that a man I knew wanted to dispose of. Good night.”

He disappeared quickly into the darkness.

Mr Joyce was quite right about the trial. The assessors went into court fully determined to acquit Mrs Crosbie. She gave evidence on her own behalf. She told her story simply and with straightforwardness. The D.P.P. was a kindly man and it was plain that he took no great pleasure in his task. He asked the necessary questions in a deprecating manner. His speech for the prosecution might really have been a speech for the defence, and the assessors took less than five minutes to consider their popular verdict. It was impossible to prevent the great outburst of applause with which it was received by the crowd that packed the courthouse. The judge congratulated Mrs Crosbie and she was a free woman.

No one had expressed a more violent disapprobation of Hammond’s behaviour than Mrs Joyce; she was a woman loyal to her friends and she had insisted on the Crosbies staying with her after the trial, for she in common with everyone else had no doubt of the result, till they could make arrangements to go away. It was out of the question for poor, dear, brave Leslie to return to the bungalow at which the horrible catastrophe had taken place.

The trial was over by half past twelve and when they reached the Joyces’ house a grand luncheon was awaiting them. Cocktails were ready, Mrs Joyce’s million-dollar cocktail was celebrated through all the Malay States, and Mrs Joyce drank Leslie’s health. She was a talkative, vivacious woman, and now she was in the highest spirits. It was fortunate, for the rest of them were silent. She did not wonder; her husband never had much to say, and the other two were naturally exhausted from the long strain to which they had been subjected. During luncheon she carried on a bright and spirited monologue. Then coffee was served.

“Now, children,” she said in her gay, bustling fashion, “you must have a rest and after tea I shall take you both for a drive to the sea.”

Mr Joyce, who lunched at home only by exception, had of course to go back to his office.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mrs Joyce,” said Crosbie. “I’ve got to get back to the estate at once.”

“Not today?” she cried.

“Yes, now. I’ve neglected it for too long and I have urgent business. But I shall be very grateful if you will keep Leslie until we have decided what to do.” Mrs Joyce was about to expostulate, but her husband prevented her. “If he must go, he must, and there’s an end of it.”

There was something in the lawyer’s tone which made her look at him quickly. She held her tongue and there was a moment’s silence. Then Crosbie spoke again.

“If you’ll forgive me, I’ll start at once so that I can get there before dark.” He rose from the table. “Will you come and see me off, Leslie?”

“Of course.”

They went out of the dining-room together.

“I think that’s rather inconsiderate of him,” said Mrs Joyce. “He must know that Leslie wants to be with him just now.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t go if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”

“Well, I’ll just see that Leslie’s room is ready for her. She wants a complete rest, of course, and then amusement.”

Mrs Joyce left the room and Joyce sat down again. In a short time he heard Crosbie start the engine of his motor-cycle and then noisily scrunch over the gravel of the garden path. He got up and went into the drawing-room. Mrs Crosbie was standing in the middle of it, looking into space, and in her hand was an open letter. He recognized it. She gave him a glance as he came in and he saw that she was deathly pale.

“He knows,” she whispered.

Mr Joyce went up to her and took the letter from her hand. He lit a match and set the paper afire. She watched it burn. When he could hold it no longer he dropped it on the tiled floor and they both looked at the paper curl and blacken. Then he trod it into ashes with his foot.

“What does he know?”

She gave him a long, long stare and into her eyes came a strange look. Was it contempt or despair? Mr Joyce could not tell.

“He knows that Geoff was my lover.”

Mr Joyce made no movement and uttered no sound.

“He’d been my lover for years. He became my lover almost immediately after he came back from the war. We knew how careful we must be. When we became lovers I pretended I was tired of him, and he seldom came to the house when Robert was there. I used to drive out to a place we knew and he met me, two or three times a week, and when Robert went to Singapore he used to come to the bungalow late, when the boys had gone for the night. We saw one another constantly, all the time, and not a soul had the smallest suspicion of it. And then lately, a year ago, he began to change. I didn’t know what was the matter. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t care for me any more. He always denied it. I was frantic. I made him scenes. Sometimes I thought he hated me. Oh, if you knew what agonies I endured. I passed through hell. I knew he didn’t want me any more and I wouldn’t let him go. Misery! Misery! I loved him. I’d given him everything. He was my life. And then I heard he was living with a Chinese woman. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. At last I saw her, I saw her with my own eyes, walking in the village, with her gold bracelets and her necklaces, an old, fat Chinese woman. She was older than I was. Horrible! They all knew in the kampong that she was his mistress. And when I passed her, she looked at me and I knew that she knew I was his mistress too. I sent for him. I told him I must see him. You’ve read the letter. I was mad to write it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t care. I hadn’t seen him for ten days. It was a lifetime. And when last we’d parted he took me in his arms and kissed me, and told me not to worry. And he went straight from my arms to hers.”

She had been speaking in a low voice, vehemently, and now she stopped and wrung her hands.

“That damned letter. We’d always been so careful. He always tore up any word I wrote to him the moment he’d read it. How was I to know he’d leave that one? He came, and I told him I knew about the Chinawoman. He denied it. He said it was only scandal. I was beside myself. I don’t know what I said to him. Oh, I hated him then. I tore him limb from limb. I said everything I could to wound him. I insulted him. I could have spat in his face. And at last he turned on me. He told me he was sick and tired of me and never wanted to see me again. He said I bored him to death. And then he acknowledged that it was true about the Chinawoman. He said he’d known her for years, before the war, and she was the only woman who really meant anything to him, and the rest was just pastime. And he said he was glad I knew and now at last I’d leave him alone. And then I don’t know what happened, I was beside myself, I saw red. I seized the revolver and I fired. He gave a cry and I saw I’d hit him. He staggered and rushed for the veranda. I ran after him and fired again. He fell and then I stood over him and I fired till the revolver went click, click, and I knew there were no more cartridges.”

At last she stopped, panting. Her face was no longer human, it was distorted with cruelty, and rage and pain. You would never have thought that this quiet, refined woman was capable of such fiendish passion. Mr Joyce took a step backwards. He was absolutely aghast at the sight of her. It was not a face, it was a gibbering, hideous mask. Then they heard a voice calling from another room, a loud, friendly, cheerful voice. It was Mrs Joyce.

“Come along, Leslie darling, your room’s ready. You must be dropping with sleep.”

Mrs Crosbie’s features gradually composed themselves. Those passions, so clearly delineated, were smoothed away as with your hand you would smooth crumpled paper, and in a minute the face was cool and calm and unlined. She was a trifle pale, but her lips broke into a pleasant, affable smile. She was once more the well-bred and even distinguished woman.

“I’m coming, Dorothy dear. I’m sorry to give you so much trouble.”

BEFORE THE PARTY

MRS SKINNER liked to be in good time. She was already dressed, in black silk as befitted her age and the mourning she wore for her son-in-law, and now she put on her toque. She was a little uncertain about it, since the egrets’ feathers which adorned it might very well arouse in some of the friends she would certainly meet at the party acid expostulations; and of course it was shocking to kill those beautiful white birds, in the mating season too, for the sake of their feathers; but there they were, so pretty and stylish, and it would have been silly to refuse them, and it would have hurt her son-in-law’s feelings. He had brought them all the way from Borneo and he expected her to be so pleased with them. Kathleen had made herself rather unpleasant about them, she must wish she hadn’t now, after what had happened, but Kathleen had never really liked Harold. Mrs Skinner, standing at her dressing-table, placed the toque on her head, it was after all the only nice hat she had, and put in a pin with a large jet knob. If anybody spoke to her about the ospreys she had her answer.

“I know it’s dreadful,” she would say, “and I wouldn’t dream of buying them, but my poor son-in-law brought them back the last time he was home on leave.”

That would explain her possession of them and excuse their use. Everyone had been very kind. Mrs Skinner took a clean handkerchief from a drawer and sprinkled a little eau de Cologne on it. She never used scent, and she had always thought it rather fast, but eau de Cologne was so refreshing. She was very nearly ready now, and her eyes wandered out of the window behind her looking-glass. Canon Hey wood had a beautiful day for his garden-party. It was warm and the sky was blue; the trees had not yet lost the fresh green of the spring. She smiled as she saw her little granddaughter in the strip of garden behind the house busily raking her very own flower-bed. Mrs Skinner wished Joan were not quite so pale, it was a mistake to have kept her so long in the tropics; and she was so grave for her age, you never saw her run about; she played quiet games of her own invention and watered her garden. Mrs Skinner gave the front of her dress a little pat, took up her gloves, and went downstairs.

Kathleen was at the writing-table in the window busy with lists she was making, for she was honorary secretary of the Ladies’ Golf Club, and when there were competitions had a good deal to do. But she too was ready for the party.

“I see you’ve put on your jumper after all,” said Mrs Skinner.

They had discussed at luncheon whether Kathleen should wear her jumper or her black chiffon. The jumper was black and white, and Kathleen thought it rather smart, but it was hardly mourning. Millicent, however, was in favour of it.

“There’s no reason why we should all look as if we’d just come from a funeral,” she said. “Harold’s been dead eight months.”

To Mrs Skinner it seemed rather unfeeling to talk like that. Millicent was strange since her return from Borneo.

“You’re not going to leave off your weeds yet, darling?” she asked.

Millicent did not give a direct answer.

“People don’t wear mourning in the way they used,” she said. She paused a little and when she went on there was a tone in her voice which Mrs Skinner thought quite peculiar. It was plain that Kathleen noticed it too, for she gave her sister a curious look. “I’m sure Harold wouldn’t wish me to wear mourning for him indefinitely.”

“I dressed early because I wanted to say something to Millicent,” said Kathleen in reply to her mother’s observation.

“Oh?”

Kathleen did not explain. But she put her lists aside and with knitted brows read for the second time a letter from a lady who complained that the committee had most unfairly marked down her handicap from twenty-four to eighteen. It requires a good deal of tact to be honorary secretary to a ladies’ golf club. Mrs Skinner began to put on her new gloves. The sun-blinds kept the room cool and dark. She looked at the great wooden hornbill, gaily painted, which Harold had left in her safekeeping; and it seemed a little odd and barbaric to her, but he had set much store on it. It had some religious significance and Canon Heywood had been greatly struck by it. On the wall, over the sofa, were Malay weapons, she forgot what they were called, and here and there on occasional tables pieces of silver and brass which Harold at various times had sent to them. She had liked Harold and involuntarily her eyes sought his photograph which stood on the piano with photographs of her two daughters, her grandchild, her sister, and her sister’s son.

“Why, Kathleen, where’s Harold’s photograph?” she asked.

Kathleen looked round. It no longer stood in its place.

“Someone’s taken it away,” said Kathleen.

Surprised and puzzled, she got up and went over to the piano. The photographs had been rearranged so that no gap should show.

“Perhaps Millicent wanted to have it in her bedroom,” said Mrs Skinner.

“I should have noticed it. Besides, Millicent has several photographs of Harold. She keeps them locked up.”

Mrs Skinner had thought it very peculiar that her daughter should have no photographs of Harold in her room. Indeed she had spoken of it once, but Millicent had made no reply. Millicent had been strangely silent since she came back from Borneo, and had not encouraged the sympathy Mrs Skinner would have been so willing to show her. She seemed unwilling to speak of her great loss. Sorrow took people in different ways. Her husband had said the best thing was to leave her alone. The thought of him turned her ideas to the party they were going to.

“Father asked if I thought he ought to wear a top-hat,” she said. “I said I thought it was just as well to be on the safe side.”

It was going to be quite a grand affair. They were having ices, strawberry and vanilla, from Boddy, the confectioner, but the Hey woods were making the iced coffee at home. Everyone would be there. They had been asked to meet the Bishop of Hong Kong, who was staying with the Canon, an old college friend of his, and he was going to speak on the Chinese missions. Mrs Skinner, whose daughter had lived in the East for eight years and whose son-in-law had been Resident of a district in Borneo, was in a flutter of interest. Naturally it meant more to her than to people who had never had anything to do with the Colonies and that sort of thing.

“What can they know of England who only England know?” as Mr Skinner said.

He came into the room at that moment. He was a lawyer, as his father had been before him, and he had offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He went up to London every morning and came down every evening. He was only able to accompany his wife and daughters to the Canon’s garden-party because the Canon had very wisely chosen a Saturday to have it on. Mr Skinner looked very well in his tail-coat and pepper-and-salt trousers. He was not exactly dressy, but he was neat. He looked like a respectable family solicitor, which indeed he was; his firm never touched work that was not perfectly above board, and if a client went to him with some trouble that was not quite nice, Mr Skinner would look grave.

“I don’t think this is the sort of case that we very much care to undertake,” he said. “I think you’d do better to go elsewhere.”

He drew towards him his writing-block and scribbled a name and address on it. He tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to his client.

“If I were you I think I would go and see these people. If you mention my name I believe they’ll do anything they can for you.”

Mr Skinner was clean-shaven and very bald. His pale lips were tight and thin, but his blue eyes were shy. He had no colour in his cheeks and his face was much lined.

“I see you’ve put on your new trousers,” said Mrs Skinner.

“I thought it would be a good opportunity,” he answered. “I was wondering if I should wear a buttonhole.”

“I wouldn’t, father,” said Kathleen. “I don’t think it’s awfully good form.”

“A lot of people will be wearing them,” said Mrs Skinner.

“Only clerks and people like that,” said Kathleen. “The Heywoods have had to ask everybody, you know. And besides, we are in mourning.”

“I wonder if there’ll be a collection after the Bishop’s address,” said Mr Skinner.

“I should hardly think so,” said Mrs Skinner.

“I think it would be rather bad form,” agreed Kathleen.

“It’s as well to be on the safe side,” said Mr Skinner. “I’ll give for all of us. I was wondering if ten shillings would be enough or if I must give a pound.”

“If you give anything I think you ought to give a pound, father,” said Kathleen.

“I’ll see when the time comes. I don’t want to give less than anyone else, but on the other hand I see no reason to give more than I need.”

Kathleen put away her papers in the drawer of the writing-table and stood up. She looked at her wrist-watch.

“Is Millicent ready?” asked Mrs Skinner.

“There’s plenty of time. We’re only asked at four, and I don’t think we ought to arrive much before half past. I told Davis to bring the car round at four-fifteen.”

Generally Kathleen drove the car, but on grand occasions like this Davis, who was the gardener, put on his uniform and acted as chauffeur. It looked better when you drove up, and naturally Kathleen didn’t much want to drive herself when she was wearing her new jumper. The sight of her mother forcing her fingers one by one into her new gloves reminded her that she must put on her own. She smelt them to see if any odour of the cleaning still clung to them. It was very slight. She didn’t believe anyone would notice.

At last the door opened and Millicent came in. She wore her widow’s weeds. Mrs Skinner never could get used to them, but of course she knew that Millicent must wear them for a year. It was a pity they didn’t suit her; they suited some people. She had tried on Millicent’s bonnet once, with its white band and long veil, and thought she looked very well in it. Of course she hoped dear Alfred would survive her, but if he didn’t she would never go out of weeds. Queen Victoria never had. It was different for Millicent; Millicent was a much younger woman; she was only thirty-six: it was very sad to be a widow at thirty-six. And there wasn’t much chance of her marrying again. Kathleen wasn’t very likely to marry now, she was thirty-five; last time Millicent and Harold had come home she had suggested that they should have Kathleen to stay with them; Harold had seemed willing enough, but Millicent said it wouldn’t do. Mrs Skinner didn’t know why not. It would give her a chance. Of course they didn’t want to get rid of her, but a girl ought to marry, and somehow all the men they knew at home were married already. Millicent said the climate was trying. It was true she was a bad colour. No one would think now that Millicent had been the prettier of the two. Kathleen had fined down as she grew older, of course some people said she was too thin, but now that she had cut her hair, with her cheeks red from playing golf in all weathers, Mrs Skinner thought her quite pretty. No one could say that of poor Millicent; she had lost her figure completely; she had never been tall, and now that she had filled out she looked stocky. She was a good deal too fat; Mrs Skinner supposed it was due to the tropical heat that prevented her from taking exercise. Her skin was sallow and muddy; and her blue eyes, which had been her best feature, had gone quite pale.

“She ought to do something about her neck,” Mrs Skinner reflected. “She’s becoming dreadfully jowly.”

She had spoken of it once or twice to her husband. He remarked that Millicent wasn’t as young as she was; that might be, but she needn’t let herself go altogether. Mrs Skinner made up her mind to talk to her daughter seriously, but of course she must respect her grief, and she would wait till the year was up. She was just as glad to have this reason to put off a conversation the thought of which made her slightly nervous. For Millicent was certainly changed. There was something sullen in her face which made her mother not quite at home with her. Mrs Skinner liked to say aloud all the thoughts that passed through her head, but Millicent when you made a remark (just to say something, you know) had an awkward habit of not answering, so that you wondered whether she had heard. Sometimes Mrs Skinner found it so irritating, that not to be quite sharp with Millicent she had to remind herself that poor Harold had only been dead eight months.

The light from the window fell on the widow’s heavy face as she advanced silently, but Kathleen stood with her back to it. She watched her sister for a moment.

“Millicent, there’s something I want to say to you,” she said. “I was playing golf with Gladys Hey wood this morning.”

“Did you beat her?” asked Millicent.

Gladys Hey wood was the Canon’s only unmarried daughter.

“She told me something about you which I think you ought to know.”

Millicent’s eyes passed beyond her sister to the little girl watering flowers in the garden.

“Have you told Annie to give Joan her tea in the kitchen, mother?” she said.

“Yes, she’ll have it when the servants have theirs.” Kathleen looked at her sister coolly.

“The Bishop spent two or three days at Singapore on his way home,” she went on. “He’s very fond of travelling. He’s been to Borneo, and he knows a good many of the people that you know.”

“He’ll be interested to see you, dear,” said Mrs Skinner. “Did he know poor Harold?”

“Yes, he met him at Kuala Solor. He remembers him very well. He says he was shocked to hear of his death.”

Millicent sat down and began to put on her black gloves. It seemed strange to Mrs Skinner that she received these remarks with complete silence.

“Oh, Millicent,” she said, “Harold’s photo has disappeared. Have you taken it?”

“Yes, I put it away.”

“I should have thought you’d like to have it out.”

Once more Millicent said nothing. It really was an exasperating habit.

Kathleen turned slightly in order to face her sister.

“Millicent, why did you tell us that Harold died of fever?”

The widow made no gesture, she looked at Kathleen with steady eyes, but her sallow skin darkened with a flush. She did not reply.

“What do you mean, Kathleen?” asked Mr Skinner, with surprise.

“The Bishop says that Harold committed suicide.”

Mrs Skinner gave a startled cry, but her husband put out a deprecating hand.

“Is it true, Millicent?”

“It is.”

“But why didn’t you tell us?”

Millicent paused for an instant. She fingered idly a piece of Brunei brass which stood on the table by her side. That too had been a present from Harold.

“I thought it better for Joan that her father should be thought to have died of fever. I didn’t want her to know anything about it.”

“You’ve put us in an awfully awkward position,” said Kathleen, frowning a little. “Gladys Hey wood said she thought it rather nasty of me not to have told her the truth. I had the greatest difficulty in getting her to believe that I knew absolutely nothing about it. She said her father was rather put out. He says, after all the years we’ve known one another, and considering that he married you, and the terms we’ve been on, and all that, he does think we might have had confidence in him. And at all events, if we didn’t want to tell him the truth we needn’t have told him a lie.”

“I must say I sympathize with him there,” said Mr Skinner, acidly.

“Of course I told Gladys that we weren’t to blame. We only told them what you told us.”

“I hope it didn’t put you off your game,” said Millicent.

“Really, my dear, I think that is a most improper observation,” exclaimed her father.

He rose from his chair, walked over to the empty fireplace, and from force of habit stood in front of it with parted coat-tails.

“It was my business,” said Millicent, “and if I chose to keep it to myself I didn’t see why I shouldn’t.”

“It doesn’t look as if you had any affection for your mother if you didn’t even tell her,” said Mrs Skinner.

Millicent shrugged her shoulders.

“You might have known it was bound to come out,” said Kathleen.

“Why? I didn’t expect that two gossiping old parsons would have nothing else to talk about than me.”

“When the Bishop said he’d been to Borneo it’s only natural that the Hey woods should ask him if he knew you and Harold.”

“All that’s neither here nor there,” said Mr Skinner. “I think you should certainly have told us the truth, and we could have decided what was the best thing to do. As a solicitor I can tell you that in the long run it only makes things worse if you attempt to hide them.”

“Poor Harold,” said Mrs Skinner, and the tears began to trickle down her raddled cheeks. “It seems dreadful. He was always a good son-in-law to me. Whatever induced him to do such a dreadful thing?”

“The climate.”

“I think you’d better give us all the facts, Millicent,” said her father.

“Kathleen will tell you.”

Kathleen hesitated. What she had to say really was rather dreadful. It seemed terrible that such things should happen to a family like theirs.

“The Bishop says he cut his throat.”

Mrs Skinner gasped and she went impulsively up to her bereaved daughter. She wanted to fold her in her arms.

“My poor child,” she sobbed.

But Millicent withdrew herself.

“Please don’t fuss me, mother. I really can’t stand being mauled about.”

“Really, Millicent,” said Mr Skinner, with a frown.

He did not think she was behaving very nicely.

Mrs Skinner dabbed her eyes carefully with her handkerchief and with a sigh and a little shake of the head returned to her chair. Kathleen fidgeted with the long chain she wore round her neck.

“It does seem rather absurd that I should have to be told the details of my brother-in-law’s death by a friend. It makes us all look such fools. The Bishop wants very much to see you, Millicent; he wants to tell you how much he feels for you.” She paused, but Millicent did not speak. “He says that Millicent had been away with Joan and when she came back she found poor Harold lying dead on his bed.”

“It must have been a great shock,” said Mr Skinner.

Mrs Skinner began to cry again, but Kathleen put her hand gently on her shoulder.

“Don’t cry, mother,” she said. “It’ll make your eyes red and people will think it so funny.”

They were all silent while Mrs Skinner, drying her eyes, made a successful effort to control herself. It seemed very strange to her that this very moment she should be wearing in her toque the ospreys that poor Harold had given her.

“There’s something else I ought to tell you,” said Kathleen.

Millicent looked at her sister again, without haste, and her eyes were steady, but watchful. She had the look of a person who is waiting for a sound which he is afraid of missing.

“I don’t want to say anything to wound you, dear,” Kathleen went on, “but there’s something else and I think you ought to know it. The Bishop says that Harold drank.”

“Oh, my dear, how dreadful!” cried Mrs Skinner. “What a shocking thing to say. Did Gladys Heywood tell you? What did you say?”

“I said it was entirely untrue.”

“This is what comes of making secrets of things,” said Mr Skinner, irritably. “It’s always the same. If you try and hush a thing up all sorts of rumours get about which are ten times worse than the truth.”

“They told the Bishop in Singapore that Harold had killed himself while he was suffering from delirium tremens. I think for all our sakes you ought to deny that, Millicent.”

“It’s such a dreadful thing to have said about anyone who’s dead,” said Mrs Skinner. “And it’ll be so bad for Joan when she grows up.”

“But what is the foundation of this story, Millicent?” asked her father. “Harold was always very abstemious.”

“Here,” said the widow.

“Did he drink?”

“Like a fish.”

The answer was so unexpected, and the tone so sardonic, that all three of them were startled.

“Millicent, how can you talk like that of your husband when he’s dead?” cried her mother, clasping her neatly gloved hands. “I can’t understand you. You’ve been so strange since you came back. I could never have believed that a girl of mine could take her husband’s death like that.”

“Never mind about that, mother,” said Mr Skinner. “We can go into all that later.”

He walked to the window and looked out at the sunny little garden, and then walked back into the room. He took his pince-nez out of his pocket, and though he had no intention of putting them on, wiped them with his handkerchief. Millicent looked at him and in her eyes, unmistakably, was a look of irony which was quite cynical. Mr Skinner was vexed. He had finished his week’s work and he was a free man till Monday morning. Though he had told his wife that this garden-party was a great nuisance and he would much sooner have tea quietly in his own garden, he had been looking forward to it. He did not care very much about Chinese missions, but it would be interesting to meet the Bishop. And now this! It was not the kind of thing he cared to be mixed up in; it was most unpleasant to be told on a sudden that his son-in-law was a drunkard and a suicide. Millicent was thoughtfully smoothing her white cuffs. Her coolness irritated him; but instead of addressing her he spoke to his younger daughter.

“Why don’t you sit down, Kathleen? Surely there are plenty of chairs in the room.”

Kathleen drew forward a chair and without a word seated herself. Mr Skinner stopped in front of Millicent and faced her.

“Of course I see why you told us Harold had died of fever. I think it was a mistake, because that sort of thing is bound to come out sooner or later. I don’t know how far what the Bishop has told the Heywoods coincides with the facts, but if you will take my advice you will tell us everything as circumstantially as you can, then we can see. We can’t hope that it will go no further now that Canon Heywood and Gladys know. In a place like this people are bound to talk. It will make it easier for all of us if we at all events know the exact truth.”

Mrs Skinner and Kathleen thought he put the matter very well. They waited for Millicent’s reply. She had listened with an impassive face; that sudden flush had disappeared and it was once more, as usual, pasty and sallow.

“I don’t think you’ll much like the truth if I tell it you,” she said.

“You must know that you can count on our sympathy and understanding,” said Kathleen gravely.

Millicent gave her a glance and the shadow of a smile flickered across her set mouth. She looked slowly at the three of them. Mrs Skinner had an uneasy impression that she looked at them as though they were mannequins at a dressmaker’s. She seemed to live in a different world from theirs and to have no connexion with them.

“You know, I wasn’t in love with Harold when I married him,” she said reflectively.

Mrs Skinner was on the point of making an exclamation when a rapid gesture of her husband, barely indicated, but after so many years of married life perfectly significant, stopped her. Millicent went on. She spoke with a level voice, slowly, and there was little change of expression in her tone.

“I was twenty-seven, and no one else seemed to want to marry me. It’s true he was forty-four, and it seemed rather old, but he had a very good position, hadn’t he? I wasn’t likely to get a better chance.”

Mrs Skinner felt inclined to cry again, but she remembered the party.

“Of course I see now why you took his photograph away,” she said dolefully.

“Don’t, mother,” exclaimed Kathleen.

It had been taken when he was engaged to Millicent and was a very good photograph of Harold. Mrs Skinner had always thought him quite a fine man. He was heavily built, tall and perhaps a little too fat, but he held himself well, and his presence was imposing. He was inclined to be bald, even then, but men did go bald very early nowadays, and he said that topees, sun-helmets, you know, were very bad for the hair. He had a small dark moustache, and his face was deeply burned by the sun. Of course his best feature was his eyes; they were brown and large, like Joan’s. His conversation was interesting. Kathleen said he was pompous, but Mrs Skinner didn’t think him so, she didn’t mind it if a man laid down the law; and when she saw, as she very soon did, that he was attracted by Millicent she began to like him very much. He was always very attentive to Mrs Skinner, and she listened as though she were really interested when he spoke of his district, and told her of the big game he had killed. Kathleen said he had a pretty good opinion of himself, but Mrs Skinner came of a generation which accepted without question the good opinion that men had of themselves. Millicent saw very soon which way the wind blew, and though she said nothing to her mother, her mother knew that if Harold asked her she was going to accept him.

Harold was slaying with some people who had been thirty years in Borneo and they spoke well of the country. There was no reason why a woman shouldn’t live there comfortably; of course the children had to come home when they were seven; but Mrs Skinner thought it unnecessary to trouble about that yet. She asked Harold to dine, and she told him they were always in to tea. He seemed to be at a loose end, and when his visit to his old friends was drawing to a close, she told him they would be very much pleased if he would come and spend a fortnight with them. It was towards the end of this that Harold and Millicent became engaged. They had a very pretty wedding, they went to Venice for their honeymoon, and then they started for the East. Millicent wrote from various ports at which the ship touched. She seemed happy.

“People were very nice to me at Kuala Solor,” she said. Kuala Solor was the chief town of the state of Sembulu. “We stayed with the Resident and everyone asked us to dinner. Once or twice I heard men ask Harold to have a drink, but he refused; he said he had turned over a new leaf now he was a married man. I didn’t know why they laughed. Mrs Gray, the Resident’s wife, told me they were all so glad Harold was married. She said it was dreadfully lonely for a bachelor on one of the outstations. When we left Kuala Solor Mrs Gray said good-bye to me so funnily that I was quite surprised. It was as if she was solemnly putting Harold in my charge.”

They listened to her in silence. Kathleen never took her eyes off her sister’s impassive face; but Mr Skinner stared straight in front of him at the Malay arms, krises and parangs, which hung on the wall above the sofa on which his wife sat.

“It wasn’t till I went back to Kuala Solor a year and a half later, that I found out why their manner had seemed so odd.” Millicent gave a queer little sound like the echo of a scornful laugh. “I knew then a good deal that I hadn’t known before. Harold came to England that time in order to marry. He didn’t much mind who it was. Do you remember how we spread ourselves out to catch him, mother? We needn’t have taken so much trouble.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Millicent,” said Mrs Skinner, not without acerbity, for the insinuation of scheming did not please her. “I saw he was attracted by you.”

Millicent shrugged her heavy shoulders.

“He was a confirmed drunkard. He used to go to bed every night with a bottle of whisky and empty it before morning. The Chief Secretary told him he’d have to resign unless he stopped drinking. He said he’d give him one more chance. He could take his leave then and go to England. He advised him to marry so that when he got back he’d have someone to look after him. Harold married me because he wanted a keeper. They took bets in Kuala Solor on how long I’d make him stay sober.”

“But he was in love with you,” Mrs Skinner interrupted. “You don’t know how he used to speak to me about you, and at that time you’re speaking of, when you went to Kuala Solor to have Joan, he wrote me such a charming letter about you.”

Millicent looked at her mother again and a deep colour dyed her sallow skin. Her hands, lying on her lap, began to tremble a little. She thought of those first months of her married life. The government launch took them to the mouth of the river, and they spent the night at the bungalow which Harold said jokingly was their seaside residence. Next day they went up-stream in a prahu. From the novels she had read she expected the rivers of Borneo to be dark and strangely sinister, but the sky was blue, dappled with little white clouds, and the green of the mangroves and the nipahs, washed by the flowing water, glistened in the sun. On each side stretched the pathless jungle, and in the distance, silhouetted against the sky, was the rugged outline of a mountain. The air in the early morning was fresh and buoyant. She seemed to enter upon a friendly, fertile land, and she had a sense of spacious freedom. They watched the banks for monkeys sitting on the branches of the tangled trees, and once Harold pointed out something that looked like a log and said it was a crocodile. The Assistant Resident, in ducks and a topee, was at the landing-stage to meet them, and a dozen trim little soldiers were lined up to do them honour. The Assistant Resident was introduced to her. His name was Simpson.

“By Jove, sir,” he said to Harold. “I’m glad to see you back. It’s been deuced lonely without you.”

The Resident’s bungalow, surrounded by a garden in which grew wildly all manner of gay flowers, stood on the top of a low hill. It was a trifle shabby and the furniture was sparse, but the rooms were cool and of generous size.

“The kampong is down there,” said Harold, pointing.

Her eyes followed his gesture, and from among the coconut trees rose the beating of a gong. It gave her a queer little sensation in the heart.

Though she had nothing much to do the days passed easily enough. At dawn a boy brought them their tea and they lounged about the veranda, enjoying the fragrance of the morning (Harold in a singlet and a sarong, she in a dressing-gown) till it was time to dress for breakfast. Then Harold went to his office and she spent an hour or two learning Malay. After tiffin he went back to his office while she slept. A cup of tea revived them both, and they went for a walk or played golf on the nine-hole links which Harold had made on a level piece of cleared jungle below the bungalow. Night fell at six and Mr Simpson came along to have a drink. They chatted till their late dinner hour, and sometimes Harold and Mr Simpson played chess. The balmy evenings were enchanting. The fireflies turned the bushes just below the veranda into coldly-sparkling, tremulous beacons, and flowering trees scented the air with sweet odours. After dinner they read the papers which had left London six weeks before and presently went to bed. Millicent enjoyed being a married woman, with a house of her own, and she was pleased with the native servants, in their gay sarongs, who went about the bungalow, with bare feet, silent but friendly. It gave her a pleasant sense of importance to be the wife of the Resident. Harold impressed her by the fluency with which he spoke the language, by his air of command, and by his dignity. She went into the court-house now and then to hear him try cases. The multifariousness of his duties and the competent way in which he performed them aroused her respect. Mr Simpson told her that Harold understood the natives as well as any man in the country. He had the combination of firmness, tact, and good-humour which was essential in dealing with that timid, revengeful, and suspicious race. Millicent began to feel a certain admiration for her husband.

They had been married nearly a year when two English naturalists came to stay with them for a few days on their way to the interior. They brought a pressing recommendation from the governor, and Harold said he wanted to do them proud. Their arrival was an agreeable change. Millicent asked

Mr Simpson to dinner (he lived at the Fort and only dined with them on Sunday nights) and after dinner the men sat down to play bridge. Millicent left them presently and went to bed, but they were so noisy that for some time she could not get to sleep. She did not know at what hour she was awakened by Harold staggering into the room. She kept silent. He made up his mind to have a bath before getting into bed; the bath-house was just below their room, and he went down the steps that led to it. Apparently he slipped, for there was a great clatter, and he began to swear. Then he was violently sick. She heard him sluice the buckets of water over himself and in a little while, walking very cautiously this time, he crawled up the stairs and slipped into bed. Millicent pretended to be asleep. She was disgusted. Harold was drunk. She made up her mind to speak about it in the morning. What would the naturalists think of him? But in the morning Harold was so dignified that she hadn’t quite the determination to refer to the matter. At eight Harold and she, with their two guests, sat down to breakfast. Harold looked round the table.

“Porridge,” he said. “Millicent, your guests might manage a little Worcester sauce for breakfast, but I don’t think they’ll much fancy anything else. Personally I shall content myself with a whisky and soda.”

The naturalists laughed, but shamefacedly.

“Your husband’s a terror,” said one of them.

“I should not think I had properly performed the duties of hospitality if I sent you sober to bed on the first night of your visit,” said Harold, with his round, stately way of putting things.

Millicent, smiling acidly, was relieved to think that her guests had been as drunk as her husband. The next evening she sat up with them and the party broke up at a reasonable hour. But she was glad when the strangers went on with their journey. Their life resumed its placid course. Some months later Harold went on a tour of inspection of his district and came back with a bad attack of malaria. This was the first time she had seen the disease of which she had heard so much, and when he recovered it did not seem strange to her that Harold was very shaky. She found his manner peculiar. He would come back from the office and stare at her with glazed eyes; he would stand on the veranda, swaying slightly, but still dignified, and make long harangues about the political situation in England; losing the thread of his discourse, he would look at her with an archness which his natural stateliness made somewhat disconcerting and say:

“Pulls you down dreadfully, this confounded malaria. Ah, little woman, you little know the strain it puts upon a man to be an empire builder.”

She thought that Mr Simpson began to look worried, and once or twice, when they were alone, he seemed on the point of saying something to her which his shyness at the last moment prevented. The feeling grew so strong that it made her nervous, and one evening when Harold, she knew not why, had remained later than usual at the office she tackled him.

“What have you got to say to me, Mr Simpson?” she broke out suddenly.

He blushed and hesitated.

“Nothing. What makes you think I have anything in particular to say to you?”

Mr Simpson was a thin, weedy youth of four and twenty, with a fine head of waving hair which he took great pains to plaster down very flat. His wrists were swollen and scarred with mosquito bites. Millicent looked at him steadily.

“If it’s something to do with Harold don’t you think it would be kinder to tell me frankly?”

He grew scarlet now. He shuffled uneasily on his rattan chair. She insisted.

“I’m afraid you’ll think it awful cheek,” he said at last. “It’s rotten of me to say anything about my chief behind his back. Malaria’s a rotten thing, and after one’s had a bout of it one feels awfully down and out.”

He hesitated again. The corners of his mouth sagged as if he were going to cry. To Millicent he seemed like a little boy.

“I’ll be as silent as the grave,” she said with a smile, trying to conceal her apprehension. “Do tell me.”

“I think it’s a pity your husband keeps a bottle of whisky at the office. He’s apt to take a nip more often than he otherwise would.”

Mr Simpson’s voice was hoarse with agitation. Millicent felt a sudden coldness shiver through her. She controlled herself, for she knew that she must not frighten the boy if she were to get out of him all there was to tell. He was unwilling to speak. She pressed him, wheedling, appealing to his sense of duty, and at last she began to cry. Then he told her that Harold had been drunk more or less for the last fortnight, the natives were talking about it, and they said that soon he would be as bad as he had been before his marriage. He had been in the habit of drinking a good deal too much then, but details of that time, notwithstanding all her attempts, Mr Simpson resolutely declined to give her.

“Do you think he’s drinking now?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

Millicent felt herself on a sudden hot with shame and anger. The Fort, as it was called because the rifles and the ammunition were kept there, was also the court-house. It stood opposite the Resident’s bungalow in a garden of its own. The sun was just about to set and she did not need a hat. She got up and walked across. She found Harold sitting in the office behind the large hall in which he administered justice. There was a bottle of whisky in front of him. He was smoking cigarettes and talking to three or four Malays who stood in front of him listening with obsequious and at the same time scornful smiles. His face was red.

The natives vanished.

“I came to see what you were doing,” she said.

He rose, for he always treated her with elaborate politeness, and lurched. Feeling himself unsteady he assumed an elaborate stateliness of demeanour.

“Take a seat, my dear, take a seat. I was detained by press of work.”

She looked at him with angry eyes.

“You’re drunk,” she said.

He stared at her, his eyes bulging a little, and a haughty look gradually traversed his large and fleshy face.

“I haven’t the remotest idea what you mean,” he said.

She had been ready with a flow of wrathful expostulation, but suddenly she burst into tears. She sank into a chair and hid her face. Harold looked at her for an instant, then the tears began to trickle down his own cheeks; he came towards her with outstretched arms and fell heavily on his knees. Sobbing, he clasped her to him.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” he said. “I promise you it shall not happen again. It was that damned malaria.”

“It’s so humiliating,” she moaned.

He wept like a child. There was something very touching in the self-abasement of that big dignified man. Presently Millicent looked up. His eyes, appealing and contrite, sought hers.

“Will you give me your word of honour that you’ll never touch liquor again?”

“Yes, yes. I hate it.”

It was then she told him that she was with child. He was overjoyed.

“That is the one thing I wanted. That’ll keep me straight.”

They went back to the bungalow. Harold bathed himself and had a nap. After dinner they talked long and quietly. He admitted that before he married her he had occasionally drunk more than was good for him; in outstations it was easy to fall into bad habits. He agreed to everything that Millicent asked. And during the months before it was necessary for her to go to Kuala Solor for her confinement, Harold was an excellent husband, tender, thoughtful, proud, and affectionate; he was irreproachable. A launch came to fetch her, she was to leave him for six weeks, and he promised faithfully to drink nothing during her absence. He put his hands on her shoulders.

“I never break a promise,” he said in his dignified way. “But even without it, can you imagine that while you are going through so much, I should do anything to increase your troubles?”

Joan was born. Millicent stayed at the Resident’s, and Mrs Gray, his wife, a kindly creature of middle age, was very good to her. The two women had little to do during the long hours they were alone but to talk, and in course of time Millicent learnt everything there was to know of her husband’s alcoholic past. The fact which she found most difficult to reconcile herself to was that Harold had been told that the only condition upon which he would be allowed to keep his post was that he should bring back a wife. It caused in her a dull feeling of resentment. And when she discovered what a persistent drunkard he had been, she felt vaguely uneasy. She had a horrid fear that during her absence he would not have been able to resist the craving. She went home with her baby and a nurse. She spent a night at the mouth of the river and sent a messenger in a canoe to announce her arrival. She scanned the landing-stage anxiously as the launch approached it. Harold and Mr Simpson were standing there. The trim little soldiers were lined up. Her heart sank, for Harold was swaying slightly, like a man who seeks to keep his balance on a rolling ship, and she knew he was drunk.

It wasn’t a very pleasant home-coming. She had almost forgotten her mother and father and her sister who sat there silently listening to her. Now she roused herself and became once more aware of their presence. All that she spoke of seemed very far away.

“I knew that I hated him then,” she said. “I could have killed him.”

“Oh, Millicent, don’t say that,” cried her mother. “Don’t forget that he’s dead, poor man.”

Millicent looked at her mother, and for a moment a scowl darkened her impassive face. Mr Skinner moved uneasily.

“Go on,” said Kathleen.

“When he found out that I knew all about him he didn’t bother very much more. In three months he had another attack of D.T.s.”

“Why didn’t you leave him?” said Kathleen.

“What would have been the good of that? He would have been dismissed from the service in a fortnight. Who was to keep me and Joan? I had to stay. And when he was sober I had nothing to complain of. He wasn’t in the least in love with me, but he was fond of me; I hadn’t married him because I was in love with him, but because I wanted to be married. I did everything I could to keep liquor from him; I managed to get Mr Gray to prevent whisky being sent from Kuala Solor, but he got it from the Chinese. I watched him as a cat watches a mouse. He was too cunning for me. In a little while he had another outbreak. He neglected his duties. I was afraid complaints would be made. We were two days from Kuala Solor and that was our safeguard, but I suppose something was said, for Mr Gray wrote a private letter of warning to me. I showed it to Harold. He stormed and blustered, but I saw he was frightened, and for two or three months he was quite sober. Then he began again. And so it went on till our leave became due.

“Before we came to stay here I begged and prayed him to be careful. I didn’t want any of you to know what sort of a man I had married. All the time he was in England he was all right and before we sailed I warned him. He’d grown to be very fond of Joan, and very proud of her, and she was devoted to him. She always liked him better than she liked me. I asked him if he wanted to have his child grow up, knowing that he was a drunkard, and I found out that at last I’d got a hold on him. The thought terrified him. I told him that I wouldn’t allow it, and if he ever let Joan see him drunk I’d take her away from him at once. Do you know, he grew quite pale when I said it. I fell on my knees that night and thanked God, because I’d found a way of saving my husband.

“He told me that if I would stand by him he would have another try. We made up our minds to fight the thing together. And he tried so hard. When he felt as though he must drink he came to me. You know he was inclined to be rather pompous; with me he was so humble, he was like a child; he depended on me. Perhaps he didn’t love me when he married me, but he loved me then, me and Joan. I’d hated him, because of the humiliation, because when he was drunk and tried to be dignified and impressive he was loathsome; but now I got a strange feeling in my heart. It wasn’t love, but it was a queer, shy tenderness. He was something more than my husband, he was like a child that I’d carried under my heart for long and weary months. He was so proud of me and, you know, I was proud too. His long speeches didn’t irritate me any more, and I only thought his stately ways rather funny and charming. At last we won. For two years he never touched a drop. He lost his craving entirely. He was even able to joke about it.

“Mr Simpson had left us then and we had another young man called Francis.

“‘I’m a reformed drunkard, you know, Francis,’ Harold said to him once. ‘If it hadn’t been for my wife I’d have been sacked long ago. I’ve got the best wife in the world, Francis.’

“You don’t know what it meant to me to hear him say that. I felt that all I’d gone through was worth while. I was so happy.”

She was silent. She thought of the broad, yellow and turbid river on whose banks she had lived so long. The egrets, white and gleaming in the tremulous sunset, flew down the stream in a flock, flew low and swift, and scattered. They were like a ripple of snowy notes, sweet and pure and spring-like, which an unseen hand drew forth, a divine arpeggio, from an unseen harp. They fluttered along between the green banks, wrapped in the shadows of evening, like the happy thoughts of a contented mind.

“Then Joan fell ill. For three weeks we were very anxious. There was no doctor nearer than Kuala Solor and we had to put up with the treatment of a native dispenser. When she grew well again I took her down to the mouth of the river in order to give her a breath of sea air. We stayed there a week. It was the first time I had been separated from Harold since I went away to have Joan.

There was a fishing village, on piles, not far from us, but really we were quite alone. I thought a great deal about Harold, so tenderly, and all at once I knew that I loved him. I was so glad when the prahu came to fetch us back, because I wanted to tell him. I thought it would mean a good deal to him. I can’t tell you how happy I was. As we rowed up-stream the headman told me that Mr Francis had had to go up-country to arrest a woman who had murdered her husband. He had been gone a couple of days.

“I was surprised that Harold was not on the landing-stage to meet me; he was always very punctilious about that sort of thing; he used to say that husband and wife should treat one another as politely as they treated acquaintances; and I could not imagine what business had prevented him. I walked up the little hill on which the bungalow stood. The ayah brought Joan behind me. The bungalow was strangely silent. There seemed to be no servants about, and I could not make it out; I wondered if Harold hadn’t expected me so soon and was out. I went up the steps. Joan was thirsty and the ayah took her to the servants’ quarters to give her something to drink. Harold was not in the sitting-room. I called him, but there was no answer. I was disappointed because I should have liked him to be there. I went into our bedroom. Harold wasn’t out after all; he was lying on the bed asleep. I was really very much amused, because he always pretended he never slept in the afternoon. He said it was an unnecessary habit that we white people got into. I went up to the bed softly. I thought I would have a joke with him. I opened the mosquito curtains. He was lying on his back, with nothing on but a sarong, and there was an empty whisky bottle by his side. He was drunk.

“It had begun again. All my struggles for so many years were wasted. My dream was shattered. It was all hopeless. I was seized with rage.”

Millicent’s face grew once again darkly red and she clenched the arms of the chair she sat in.

“I took him by the shoulders and shook him with all my might. ‘You beast,’ I cried, ‘you beast.’ I was so angry I don’t know what I did, I don’t know what I said. I kept on shaking him. You don’t know how loathsome he looked, that large fat man, half naked; he hadn’t shaved for days, and his face was bloated and purple. He was breathing heavily. I shouted at him, but he took no notice. I tried to drag him out of bed, but he was too heavy. He lay there like a log. ‘Open your eyes,’ I screamed. I shook him again. I hated him. I hated him all the more because for a week I’d loved him with all my heart. He’d let me down. He’d let me down. I wanted to tell him what a filthy beast he was. I could make no impression on him. ‘You shall open your eyes,’ I cried. I was determined to make him look at me.”

The widow licked her dry lips. Her breath seemed hurried. She was silent.

“If he was in that state I should have thought it best to have let him go on sleeping,” said Kathleen.

“There was a parang on the wall by the side of the bed. You know how fond Harold was of curios.”

“What’s a parang?” said Mrs Skinner.

“Don’t be silly, mother,” her husband replied irritably. “There’s one on the wall immediately behind you.”

He pointed to the Malay sword on which for some reason his eyes had been unconsciously resting. Mrs Skinner drew quickly into the corner of the sofa, with a little frightened gesture, as though she had been told that a snake lay curled up beside her.

“Suddenly the blood spurted out from Harold’s throat. There was a great red gash right across it.”

“Millicent,” cried Kathleen, springing up and almost leaping towards her, “what in God’s name do you mean?”

Mrs Skinner stood staring at her with wide startled eyes, her mouth open.

“The parang wasn’t on the wall any more. It was on the bed. Then Harold opened his eyes. They were just like Joan’s.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mr Skinner. “How could he have committed suicide if he was in the state you describe?”

Kathleen took her sister’s arm and shook her angrily.

“Millicent, for God’s sake explain.”

Millicent released herself.

“The parang was on the wall, I told you. I don’t know what happened. There was all the blood, and Harold opened his eyes. He died almost at once. He never spoke, but he gave a sort of gasp.”

At last Mr Skinner found his voice.

“But, you wretched woman, it was murder.”

Millicent, her face mottled with red, gave him such a look of scornful hatred that he shrank back. Mrs Skinner cried out.

“Millicent, you didn’t do it, did you?”

Then Millicent did something that made them all feel as though their blood were turned to ice in their veins. She chuckled.

“I don’t know who else did,” she said.

“My God,” muttered Mr Skinner.

Kathleen had been standing bolt upright with her hands to her heart, as though its beating were intolerable.

“And what happened then?” she said.

“I screamed. I went to the window and flung it open. I called for the ayah. She came across the compound with Joan. ‘Not Joan,’ I cried. ‘Don’t let her come.’ She called the cook and told him to take the child. I cried to her to hurry. And when she came I showed her Harold. ‘The Tuan’s killed himself!’ I cried. She gave a scream and ran out of the house.

“No one would come near. They were all frightened out of their wits. I wrote a letter to Mr Francis, telling him what had happened and asking him to come at once.”

“How do you mean you told him what had happened?”

“I said, on my return from the mouth of the river, I’d found Harold with his throat cut. You know, in the tropics you have to bury people quickly. I got a Chinese coffin, and the soldiers dug a grave behind the Fort. When Mr Francis came, Harold had been buried for nearly two days. He was only a boy. I could do anything I wanted with him. I told him I’d found the parang in Harold’s hand and there was no doubt he’d killed himself in an attack of delirium tremens. I showed him the empty bottle. The servants said he’d been drinking hard ever since I left to go to the sea. I told the same story at Kuala Solor. Everyone was very kind to me, and the government granted me a pension.”

For a little while nobody spoke. At last Mr Skinner gathered himself together.

“I am a member of the legal profession. I’m a solicitor. I have certain duties. We’ve always had a most respectable practice. You’ve put me in a monstrous position.”

He fumbled, searching for the phrases that played at hide and seek in his scattered wits. Millicent looked at him with scorn.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“It was murder, that’s what it was; do you think I can possibly connive at it?”

“Don’t talk nonsense, father,” said Kathleen sharply. “You can’t give up your own daughter.”

“You’ve put me in a monstrous position,” he repeated.

Millicent shrugged her shoulders again.

“You made me tell you. And I’ve borne it long enough by myself. It was time that all of you bore it too.”

At that moment the door was opened by the maid.

“Davis has brought the car round, sir,” she said.

Kathleen had the presence of mind to say something, and the maid withdrew.

“We’d better be starting,” said Millicent.

“I can’t go to the party now,” cried Mrs Skinner, with horror. “I’m far too upset. How can we face the Heywoods? And the Bishop will want to be introduced to you.”

Millicent made a gesture of indifference. Her eyes held their ironical expression.

“We must go, mother,” said Kathleen. “It would look so funny if we stayed away.” She turned on Millicent furiously. “Oh, I think the whole thing is such frightfully bad form.”

Mrs Skinner looked helplessly at her husband. He went to her and gave her his hand to help her up from the sofa.

“I’m afraid we must go, mother,” he said.

“And me with the ospreys in my toque that Harold gave me with his own hands,” she moaned.

He led her out of the room, Kathleen followed close on their heels, and a step or two behind came Millicent.

“You’ll get used to it, you know,” she said quietly. “At first I thought of it all the time, but now I forget it for two or three days together. It’s not as if there was any danger.”

They did not answer. They walked through the hall and out of the front door. The three ladies got into the back of the car and Mr Skinner seated himself beside the driver. They had no self-starter; it was an old car, and Davis went to the bonnet to crank it up. Mr Skinner turned round and looked petulantly at Millicent.

“I ought never to have been told,” he said. “I think it was most selfish of you.”

Davis took his seat and they drove off to the Canon’s garden-party.

THE OUTSTATION

THE new assistant arrived in the afternoon. When the Resident, Mr. Warburton, was told that the prahu was in sight he put on his solar topee and went down to the landing-stage. The guard, eight little Dyak soldiers, stood to attention as he passed. He noted with satisfaction that their bearing was martial, their uniforms neat and clean, and their guns shining. They were a credit to him. From the landing-stage he watched the bend of the river round which in a moment the boat would sweep. He looked very smart in his spotless ducks and white shoes. He held under his arm a gold-headed Malacca cane which had been given him by the Sultan of Perak. He awaited the newcomer with mingled feelings. There was more work in the district than one man could properly do, and during his periodical tours of the country under his charge it had been inconvenient to leave the station in the hands of a native clerk, but he had been so long the only white man there that he could not face the arrival of another without misgiving. He was accustomed to loneliness. During the war he had not seen an English face for three years; and once when he was instructed to put up an afforestation officer he was seized with panic, so that when the stranger was due to arrive, having arranged everything for his reception, he wrote a note telling him he was obliged to go up-river, and fled; he remained away till he was informed by a messenger that his guest had left.

Now the prahu appeared in the broad reach. It was manned by prisoners, Dyaks under various sentences, and a couple of

warders were waiting on the landing-stage to take them back to jail. They were sturdy fellows, used to Uie river, and they rowed with a powerful stroke. As the boat reached the side a man got out from under the attap awning and stepped on shore. The guard presented arms.

“Here we are at last. By God, I’m as cramped as the devil. I’ve brought you your mail.”

lie spoke with exuberant joviality. Mr. Warburton politely held out his hand.

“Mr. Cooper, I presume?”

“That’s right. Were you expecting any one else?”

The question had a facetious intent, but the Resident did not smile.

“My name is Warburton. I’ll show you your quarters. They'll bring your kit along.”

He preceded Cooper along the narrow pathway and they entered a compound in which stood a small bungalow.

“I’ve had it made as habitable as I could, but of course no one has lived in it for a good many years.”

It was built on piles. It consisted of a long living-room which opened on to a broad verandah, and behind, on each side of a passage, were two bedrooms.

“This’ll do me all right,” said Cooper.

“I daresay you want to have a bath and a change. I shall be very much pleased if you’ll dine with me to-night. Will eight o’clock suit you?”

“Any old time will do for me.”

The Resident gave a polite, but slightly disconcerted, smile and withdrew. He returned to the Fort where his own residence was. The impression which Allen Cooper had given him was not very favourable, but he was a fair man, and he knew that it was unjust to form an opinion on so brief a glimpse. Cooper seemed to be about thirty. He was a tall, thin fellow, with a sallow face in which there was not a spot of colour. It was a face all in one tone. He had a large, hooked nose and blue eyes. When, entering the bungalow, he had taken off his topee and flung it to a waiting boy, Mr. Warburton noticed that his large skull, covered with short, brown hair, contrasted somewhat oddly with a weak, small chin. He was dressed in khaki shorts and a khaki shirt, but they were shabby and soiled; and his battered topee had not been cleaned for days. Mr. Warburton reflected that the young man had spent a week on a coasting steamer and had passed the last forty-eight hours lying in the bottom of a prahu.

“We’ll see what he looks like when he comes in to dinner.”

He went into his room where his things were as neatly laid out as if he had an English valet, undressed, and, walking down the stairs to the bath-house, sluiced himself with cool water. The only concession he made to the climate was to wear a white dinner-jacket; but otherwise, in a boiled shirt and a high collar, silk socks and patent-leather shoes, he dressed as formally as though he were dining at his club in Pall Mall. A careful host, he went into the dining-room to see that the table was properly laid. It was gay with orchids and the silver shone brightly. The napkins were folded into elaborate shapes. Shaded candles in silver candlesticks shed a soft light. Mr. Warburton smiled his approval and returned to the sitting-room to await his guest. Presently he appeared. Cooper was wearing the khaki shorts, the khaki shirt, and the nigged jacket in which he had landed. Mr. Warburton’s smile of greeting froze on his face.

“Hulloa, you’re all dressed up,” said Cooper. “I didn’t know you were going to do that. I very nearly put on a sarong.”

“It doesn’t matter at all. 1 daresay your boys were busy.”

“You needn’t have bothered to dress on my account, you know.”

“I didn’t. I always dress for dinner.”

“Even when you’re alone?”

“Especially when I’m alone,” replied Mr. Warburton, with a frigid stare.

He saw a twinkle of amusement in Cooper’s eyes, and he flushed an angry red. Mr. Warburton was a hot-tempered man; you might have guessed that from his red face with its pugnacious features and from his red hair, now growing white; his blue eyes, cold as a rule and observing, could flush with sudden wrath; but he was a man of the world and he hoped a just one. He must do his best to get on with this fellow.

“When I lived in London I moved in circles in which it would have been just as eccentric not to dress for dinner every night as not to have a bath every morning. When I came to Borneo I saw no reason to discontinue so good a habit. For three years, during the war, I never saw a white man. I never omitted to dress on a single occasion on which I was well enough to come in to dinner. You have not been very long in this country; believe me, there is no better way to maintain the proper pride which you should have in yourself. When a white man surrenders in the slightest degree to the influences that surround him he very soon loses his self-respect, and when he loses his self-respect you may be quite sure that the natives will soon cease to respect him.”

“Well, if you expect me to put on a boiled shirt and a stiff collar in this heat I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.”

“When you are dining in your own bungalow you will, of course, dress as you think fit, but when you do me the pleasure of dining with me, perhaps you will come to the conclusion that it is only polite to wear the costume usual in civilized society.” Two Malay boys, in sarongs and songkoks, with smart white coats and brass buttons, came in, one bearing gin pahits, and the other a tray on which were olives and anchovies. Then they went in to dinner. Mr. Warburton flattered himself that he had the best cook, a Chinese, in Borneo, and he took great trouble to have as good food as in the difficult circumstances was possible. He exercised much ingenuity in making the best of his materials.

“Would you care to look at the menu?” he said, handing it to Cooper.

It was written in French and the dishes had resounding names. They were waited on by the two boys. In opposite comers of the room two more waved immense fans, and so gave movement to the sultry air. The fare was sumptuous and the champagne excellent.

“Do you do yourself like this every day?” said Cooper.

Mr. Warburton gave the menu a careless glance.

“I have not noticed that the dinner is any different from usual,” he said. “I eat very little myself, but I make a point of having a proper dinner served to me every night. It keeps the cook in practice and it’s good discipline for the boys.”

The conversation proceeded with effort. Mr. Warburton was elaborately courteous, and it may be that he found a slightly malicious amusement in the embarrassment which he thereby occasioned in his companion. Cooper had not been more than a few months in Sembulu, and Mr. Warburton’s enquiries about friends of his in Kuala Solor were soon exhausted.

“By the way,” he said presently, “did you meet a lad called Hennerley? He’s come out recently, I believe.”

“Oh, yes, he’s in the police. A rotten bounder.” “I should hardly have expected him to be that. His uncle is my friend Lord Barraclough. I had a letter from Lady Barra-clough only the other day asking me to look out for him.”

“I heard he was related to somebody or other. I suppose that’s how he got the job. He’s been to Eton and Oxford and he doesn’t forget to let you know it.”

“You surprise me,” said Mr. Warburton. “All his family have been at Eton and Oxford for a couple of hundred years. I should have expected him to take it as a matter of course.”

“I thought him a damned prig.”

“To what school did you go?”

“I was bora in Barbadoes. I was educated there.”

“Oh, I see.”

Mr. Warburton managed to put so much offensiveness into his brief reply that Cooper flushed. For a moment he was silent.

“I’ve had two or three letters from Kuala Solor,” continued Mr. Warburton, “and my impression was that young Hennerley was a great success. They say he’s a first-rate sportsman.” “Oh, yes, he’s very popular. He’s just the sort of fellow they would like in K.S. I haven’t got much use for the first-rate sportsman myself. What does it amount to in the long run that a man can play golf and tennis better than other people? And who cares if he can make a break of seventy-five at billiards? They attach a damned sight too much importance to that sort of thing in England.”

“Do you think so? I was under the impression that the first-rate sportsman had come out of the war certainly no worse than any one else.”

“Oh, if you’re going to talk of the war then I do know what I’m talking about. I was in the same regiment as Hennerley and I can tell you that the men couldn’t stick him at any price.” “How do you know?”

“Because I was one of the men.”

“Oh, you hadn’t got a commission.”

“A fat chance I had of getting a commission. I was what was called a Colonial. I hadn’t been to a public school and I had no influence. I was in the ranks the whole damned time.”

Cooper frowned. He seemed to have difficulty in preventing himself from breaking into violent invective. Mr. Warburton watched him, his little blue eyes narrowed, watched him and formed his opinion. Changing the conversation, he began to speak to Cooper about the work that would be required of him, and as the clock struck ten he rose.

“Well, I won't keep you any more. I daresay you’re tired by your journey.”

They shook hands.

“Oh, I say, look here,” said Cooper, “I wonder if you can find me a boy. The boy I had before never turned up when I was starting from K.S. He took my kit on board and all that and then disappeared. I didn’t know he wasn’t there till we were out of the river.”

“I’ll ask my head-boy. I have no doubt he can find you some one.”

“All right. Just tell him to send the boy along and if I like the look of him I’ll take him.”

There was a moon, so that no lantern was needed. Cooper walked across from the Fort to his bungalow.

“I wonder why on earth they’ve sent me a fellow like that?” reflected Mr. Warburton. “If that’s the kind of man they’re going to get out now I don’t think much of it.”

He strolled down his garden. The Fort was built on the top of a little hill and the garden ran down to the river’s edge; on the bank was an arbour, and hither it was his habit to come after dinner to smoke a cheroot. And often from the river that flowed below him a voice was heard, the voice of some Malay too timorous to venture into the light of day, and a complaint or an accusation was softly wafted to his ears, a piece of information was whispered to him or a useful hint, which otherwise would never have come into his official ken. He threw himself heavily into a long rattan chair. Cooper! An envious, ill-bred fellow, bumptious, self-assertive and vain. But Mr. Warburton’s irritation could not withstand the silent beauty of the night. The air was scented with the sweet-smelling flowers of a tree that grew at the entrance to the arbour, and the fireflies, sparkling dimly, flew with their slow and silvery flight. The moon made a pathway on the broad river for the light feet of Siva’s bride, and on the further bank a row of palm trees was delicately silhouetted against the sky. Peace stole into the soul of Mr. Warburton.

He was a queer creature and he had had a singular career. At the age of twenty-one he had inherited a considerable fortune, a hundred thousand pounds, and when he left Oxford he threw himself into the gay life which in those days (now Mr.

Warburton was a man of four and fifty) offered itself to the young man of good family. He had his flat in Mount Street, his private hansom, and his hunting-box in Warwickshire. He went to all the places where the fashionable congregate. He was handsome, amusing and generous. He was a figure in the society of London in the early nineties, and society then had not lost its exclusiveness nor its brilliance. The Boer War which shook it was unthought of; the Great War which destroyed it was prophesied only by the pessimists. It was no unpleasant thing to be a rich young man in those days, and Mr. Warburton’s chimney-piece during the season was packed with cards for one great function after another. Mr. Warburton displayed them with complacency. For Mr. Warburton was a snob. He was not a timid snob, a little ashamed of being impressed by his betters, nor a snob who sought the intimacy of persons who had acquired celebrity in politics or notoriety in the arts, nor the snob who was dazzled by riches; he was the naked, unadulterated common snob who dearly loved a lord. He was touchy and quick-tempered, but he would much rather have been snubbed by a person of quality than flattered by a commoner. His name figured insignificantly in Burke’s Peerage, and it was marvellous to watch the ingenuity he used to mention his distant relationship to the noble family he belonged to; but never a word did he say of the honest Liverpool manufacturer from whom, through his mother, a Miss Gubbins, he had come by his fortune. It was the terror of his fashionable life that at Cowes, maybe, or at Ascot, when he was with a duchess or even with a prince of the blood, one of these relatives would claim acquaintance with him.

His failing was too obvious not soon to become notorious, but its extravagance saved it from being merely despicable. The great whom he adored laughed at him, but in their hearts felt his adoration not unnatural. Poor Warburton was a dreadful snob, of course, but after all he was a good fellow'. He was always ready to back a bill for an impecunious nobleman, and if you were in a tight corner you could safely count on him for a hundred pounds. He gave good dinners. lie played whist badly, but never minded how much he lost if the company was select. He happened to be a gambler, an unlucky one, but he was a good loser, and it was impossible not to admire the coolness with which he lost five hundred pounds at a sitting. His passion for cards, almost as strong as his passion for titles, was the cause of his undoing. The life he led was expensive and his gambling losses were formidable. He began to plunge more heavily, first on horses, and then on the Stock Exchange. He had a certain simplicity of character and the unscrupulous found him an ingenuous prey. I do not know if he ever realized that his smart friends laughed at him behind his back, but I think he had an obscure instinct that he could not afford to appear other than careless of his money. He got into the hands of money-lenders. At the age of thirty-four he was ruined.

He was too much imbued with the spirit of his class to hesitate in the choice of his next step. When a man in his set had run through his money he went out to the colonies. No one heard Mr. Warburton repine. He made no complaint because a noble friend had advised a disastrous speculation, he pressed nobody to whom he had lent money to repay it, he paid his debts (if he had only known it, the despised blood of the Liverpool manufacturer came out in him there), sought help from no one, and, never having done a stroke of work in his life, looked for a means of livelihood. He remained cheerful, unconcerned and full of humour. He had no wish to make any one with whom he happened to be uncomfortable by the recital of his misfortune. Mr. Warburton was a snob, but he was also a gentleman.

The only favour he asked of any of the great friends in whose daily company he had lived for years was a recommendation. The able man who was at that time Sultan of Sembulu took him into his service. The night before he sailed he dined for the last time at his club.

“1 hear you’re going away, Warburton,” the old Duke of Hereford said to him.

“Yes, I’m going to Borneo.”

“Good God, what are you going there for?”

“Oh, I’m broke.”

“Are you? I’m sorry. Well, let us know when you come back. I hope you have a good time.”

“Oh, yes. Lots of shooting, you know.”

The Duke nodded and passed on. A few hours later Mr. Warburton watched the coast of England recede into the mist, and he left behind everything which to him made life worth living.

Twenty years had passed since then. He kept up a busy correspondence with various great ladies and his letters were amusing and chatty. He never lost his love for titled persons and paid careful attention to the announcements in The Times (which reached him six weeks after publication) of their comings and goings. He perused the column which records births, deaths, and marriages, and he was always ready with his letter of congratulation or condolence. The illustrated papers told him how people looked and on his periodical visits to England, able to take up the threads as though they had never been broken, he knew all about any new person who might have appeared on the social surface. His interest in the world of fashion was as vivid as when himself had been a figure in it. It still seemed to him the only thing that mattered.

But insensibly another interest had entered into his life. The position he found himself in flattered his vanity; he was no longer the sycophant craving the smiles of the great, he was the master whose word was law. He was gratified by the guard of Dyak soldiers who presented arms as he passed. He liked to sit in judgment on his fellow men. It pleased him to compose quarrels between rival chiefs. When the headhunters were troublesome in the old days he set out to chastise them with a thrill of pride in his own behaviour. He was too vain not to be of dauntless courage, and a pretty story was told of his coolness in adventuring single-handed into a stockaded village and demanding the surrender of a bloodthirsty pirate. He became a skilful administrator. He was strict, just and honest.

And little by little he conceived a deep love for the Malays. He interested himself in their habits and customs. He was never tired of listening to their talk. He admired their virtues, and with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders condoned their vices.

“In my day,” he would say, “I have been on intimate terms with some of the greatest gentlemen in England, but I have never known finer gentlemen than some well-born Malays whom I am proud to call my friends.”

He liked their courtesy and their distinguished manners, their gentleness and their sudden passions. He knew by instinct exactly how to treat them. He had a genuine tenderness for them. But he never forgot that he was an English gentleman and he had no patience with the white men who yielded to native customs. He made no surrenders. And he did not imitate so many of the white men in taking a native woman to wife, for an intrigue of this nature, however sanctified by custom, seemed to him not only shocking but undignified. A man who had been called George by Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, could hardly be expected to have any connection with a native. And when he returned to Borneo from his visits to England it was now with something like relief. His friends, like himself, were no longer young, and there was a new generation which looked upon him as a tiresome old man. It seemed to him that the England of to-day had lost a good deal of what he had loved in the England of his youth. But Borneo remained the same. It was home to him now. He meant to remain in the service as long as was possible, and the hope in his heart was that he would die before at last he was forced to retire. He had stated in his will that wherever he died he wished his body to be brought back to Sembulu and buried among the people he loved within sound of the softly flowing river.

But these emotions he kept hidden from the eyes of men; and no one, seeing this spruce, stout, well-set-up man, with his clean-shaven strong face and his whitening hair, would have dreamed that he cherished so profound a sentiment.

He knew how the work of the station should be done, and during the next few days he kept a suspicious eye on his assistant. He saw very soon that he was painstaking and competent. The only fault he had to find with him was that he was brusque with the natives.

“The Malays are shy and very sensitive,” he said to him. “I think you will find that you will get much better results if you take care always to be polite, patient and kindly.”

Cooper gave a short, grating laugh.

“I was born in Barbadoes and I was in Africa in the war. I don’t think there’s much about niggers that I don’t know.”

“I know nothing,” said Mr. Warburton acidly. “But we were not talking of them. We were talking of Malays.”

“Aren’t they niggers?”

“You are very ignorant,” replied Mr. Warburton.

He said no more.

On the first Sunday after Cooper’s arrival he asked him to dinner. He did everything ceremoniously, and though they had met on the previous day in the office and later, on the Fort verandah where they drank a gin and bitters together at six o’clock, he sent a polite note across to the bungalow by a boy. Cooper, however unwillingly, came in evening dress and Mr. Warburton, though gratified that his wish was respected, noticed with disdain that the young man’s clothes were badly cut and his shirt ill-fitting. But Mr. Warburton was in a good temper that evening.

“By the way,” he said to him, as he shook hands, “I’ve talked to my head-boy about finding you some one and he recommends his nephew. I’ve seen him and he seems a bright and willing lad. Would you like to see him?”

“I don’t mind.”

“He’s waiting now.”

Mr. Warburton called his boy and told him to send for his nephew. In a moment a tall, slender youth of twenty appeared. He had large dark eyes and a good profile. He was very neat in his sarong, a little white coat, and a fez, without a tassel, of plum-coloured velvet. He answered to the name of Abas. Air. Warburton looked on him with approval, and his manner insensibly softened as he spoke to him in fluent and idiomatic Malay. He was inclined to be sarcastic with white people, but with the Malays he had a happy mixture of condescension and kindliness. He stood in the place of the Sultan. He knew perfectly how to preserve his own dignity, and at the same time put a native at his ease.

“Will he do?” said Mr. Warburton, turning to Cooper.

“Yes, I daresay he’s no more of a scoundrel than any of the rest of them.”

Mr. Warburton informed the boy that he was engaged and dismissed him.

“You’re very lucky to get a boy like that,” he told Cooper. “He belongs to a very good family. They came over from Malacca nearly a hundred years ago.”

“I don’t much mind if the boy who cleans my shoes and brings me a drink when I want it has blue blood in his veins or not. All I ask is that he should do what I tell him and look sharp about it.”

Mr. Warburton pursed his lips, but made no reply.

They went in to dinner. It was excellent, and the wine was good. Its influence presently had its effect on them and they talked not only without acrimony, but even with friendliness. Mr. Warburton liked to do himself well, and on Sunday night he made it a habit to do himself even a little better than usual. He began to think he was unfair to Cooper. Of course he was not a gentleman, but that was not his fault, and when you got to know him it might be that he would turn out a very good fellow. His faults, perhaps, were faults of manner. And he was certainly good at his work, quick, conscientious and thorough. When they reached the dessert Mr. Warburton was feeling kindly disposed towards all mankind.

“This is your first Sunday and I’m going to give you a very special glass of port. I’ve only got about two dozen of it left and I keep it for special occasions.”

He gave his boy instructions and presently the bottle was brought. Mr. Warburton watched the boy open it.

“I got this port from my old friend Charles Hollington. He’d had it for forty years and I’ve had it for a good many. He was well known to have the best cellar in England.”

“Is he a wine merchant?”

“Not exactly,” smiled Mr. Warburton. “I was speaking of Lord Hollington of Castle Reagh. He’s one of the richest peers in England. A very old friend of mine. I was at Eton with his brother.”

This was an opportunity that Mr. Warburton could never resist and he told a little anecdote of which the only point seemed to be that he knew an earl. The port was certainly very good; he drank a glass and then a second. He lost all caution. He had not talked to a white man for months. He began to tell stories. He showed himself in the company of the great. Hearing him you would have thought that at one time ministries were formed and policies decided on his suggestion whispered into the ear of a duchess or thrown over the dinner-table to be gratefully acted on by the confidential adviser of the sovereign. The old days at Ascot, Goodwood and Cowes lived again for him. Another glass of port. There were the great house-parties in Yorkshire and in Scotland to which he went every year.

“I had a man called Foreman then, the best valet I ever had, and why do you think he gave me notice? You know in the Housekeeper’s Room the ladies’ maids and the gentlemen’s gentlemen sit according to the precedence of their masters. He told me he was sick of going to party after party at which I was the only commoner. It meant that he always had to sit at the bottom of the table and all the best bits were taken before a dish reached him. I told the story to the old Duke of Hereford and he roared. ‘By God, sir,’ he said, ‘if I were King of England I’d make you a viscount just to give your man a chance.’ ‘Take him yourself, Duke,’ I said. ‘He’s the best valet

I’ve ever had.’ ‘Well, Warburton,’ he said, ‘if he’s good enough for you he’s good enough for me. Send him along.”’

Then there was Monte Carlo where Mr. Warburton and the Grand Duke Fyodor, playing in partnership, had broken the bank one evening; and there was Marienbad. At Marienbad Mr. Warburton had played baccarat with Edward VII.

“He was only Prince of Wales then, of course. I remember him saying to me, ‘George, if you draw on a five you’ll lose your shirt.’ He was right; I don’t think he ever said a truer word in his life. He was a wonderful man. I always said he was the greatest diplomatist in Europe. But I was a young fool in those days, I hadn’t the sense to take his advice. If I had, if I’d never drawn on a five, I daresay I shouldn’t be here to-day.”

Cooper was watching him. His brown eyes, deep in their sockets, were hard and supercilious, and on his lips was a mocking smile. He had heard a good deal about Mr. Warburton in Kuala Solor. Not a bad sort, and he ran his district like clockwork, they said, but by heaven, what a snob! They laughed at him good-naturedly, for it was impossible to dislike a man who was so generous and so kindly, and Cooper had already heard the story of the Prince of Wales and the game of baccarat. But Cooper listened without indulgence. From the beginning he had resented the Resident’s manner. He was very sensitive and he writhed under Mr. Warburton’s polite sarcasms. Mr. Warburton had a knack of receiving a remark of which he disapproved with a devastating silence. Cooper had lived little in England and he had a peculiar dislike of the English. He resented especially the public-school boy since he always feared that he was going to patronize him. He was so much afraid of others putting on airs with him that, in order as it were to get in first, he put on such airs as to make every one think him insufferably conceited.

“Well, at all events the war has done one good thing for us,” he said at last. “It’s smashed up the power of the aristocracy. The Boer War started it, and 1914 put the lid on.”

“The great families of England are doomed,” said Mr. Warburton with the complacent melancholy of an émigré who remembered the court of Louis XV. “They cannot afford any longer to live in their splendid palaces and their princely hospitality will soon be nothing but a memory.”

“And a damned good job too in my opinion.” “My poor Cooper, what can you know of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome? ”

Mr. Warburton made an ample gesture. His eyes for an instant grew dreamy with a vision of the past.

“Well, believe me, we’re fed up with all that rot. What we want is a business government by business men. I was bom in a Crown Colony and I’ve lived practically all my life in the colonies. I don’t give a row of pins for a lord. What’s wrong with England is snobbishness. And if there’s anything that gets my goat it’s a snob.”

A snob! Mr. Warburton’s face grew purple and his eyes blazed with anger. That was a word that had pursued him all his life. The great ladies whose society he had enjoyed in his youth were not inclined to look upon his appreciation of themselves as unworthy, but even great ladies are sometimes out of temper and more than once Mr. Warburton had had the dreadful word flung in his teeth. He knew, he could not help knowing, that there were odious people who called him a snob. How unfair it was! Why, there was no vice he found so detestable as snobbishness. After all, he liked to mix with people of his own class, he was only at home in their company, and how in heaven’s name could any one say that was snobbish? Birds of a feather.

“I quite agree with you,” he answered. “A snob is a man who admires or despises another because he is of a higher social rank than his own. It is the most vulgar failing of our English middle class.”

He saw a flicker of amusement in Cooper’s eyes. Cooper put up his hand to hide the broad smile that rose to his lips, and so made it more noticeable. Mr. Warburton’s hands trembled a little.

Probably Cooper never knew how greatly he had offended his chief. A sensitive man himself he was strangely insensitive to the feelings of others.

Their work forced them to see one another for a few minutes now and then during the day, and they met at six to have a drink on Mr. Warburton’s verandah. This was an old-established custom of the country which Mr. Warburton would not for the world have broken. But they ate their meals separately, Cooper in his bungalow and Mr. Warburton at the Fort. After the office work was over they walked till dusk fell, but they walked apart. There were but few paths in this country, where the jungle pressed close upon the plantations of the village, and when Mr. Warburton caught sight of his assistant passing along with his loose stride, he would make a circuit in order to avoid him. Cooper, with his bad manners, his conceit in his own judgment and his intolerance, had already got on his nerves; but it was not till Cooper had been on the station for a couple of months that an incident happened which turned the Resident’s dislike into bitter hatred.

Mr. Warburton was obliged to go up-country on a tour of inspection, and he left the station in Cooper’s charge with more confidence, since he had definitely come to the conclusion that he was a capable fellow. The only thing he did not like was that he had no indulgence. He was honest, just and painstaking, but he had no sympathy for the natives. It bitterly amused Mr. Warburton to observe that this man, who looked upon himself as every man’s equal, should look upon so many men as his own inferiors. He was hard, he had no patience with the native mind, and he was a bully. Mr. Warburton very quickly realized that the Malays disliked and feared him. He was not altogether displeased. He would not have liked it very much if his assistant had enjoyed a popularity which might rival his own. Mr. Warburton made his elaborate preparations, set out on his expedition, and in three weeks returned. Meanwhile the mail had arrived. The first thing that struck his eyes when he entered his sitting-room was a great pile of open newspapers. Cooper had met him, and they went into the room together. Mr. Warburton turned to one of the servants who had been left behind and sternly asked him what was the meaning of those open papers. Cooper hastened to explain.

“I wanted to read all about the Wolverhampton murder and so I borrowed your Times. I brought them back again. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

Mr. Warburton turned on him, white with anger.

“But I do mind. I mind very much.”

“I’m sorry,” said Cooper, with composure. “The fact is, I simply couldn’t wait till you came back.”

“I wonder you didn’t open my letters as well.”

Cooper, unmoved, smiled at his chief’s exasperation.

“Oh, that’s not quite the same thing. After all, I couldn’t imagine you’d mind my looking at your newspapers. There’s nothing private in them.”

“I very much object to any one reading my paper before me.” He went up to the pile. There were nearly thirty numbers there. “I think it extremely impertinent of you. They’re all mixed up.”

“We can easily put them in order,” said Cooper, joining him at the table.

“Don’t touch them,” cried Mr. Warburton.

“I say, it’s childish to make a scene about a little thing like that.”

“How dare you speak to me like that?”

“Oh, go to hell,” said Cooper, and he flung out of the room.

Mr. Warburton, trembling with passion, was left contemplating his papers. His greatest pleasure in life had been destroyed by those callous, brutal hands. Most people living in out-of-the-way places when the mail comes tear open impatiently their papers and taking the last ones first glance at the latest news from home. Not so Mr. Warburton. His newsagent had instructions to write on the outside of the wrapper the date of each paper he despatched and when the great bundle arrived Mr. Warburton looked at these dates and with his blue pencil numbered them. His head-boy’s orders were to place one on the table every morning in the verandah with the early cup of tea, and it was Mr. Warburton’s especial delight to break the wrapper as he sipped his tea, and read the morning paper. It gave him the illusion of living at home. Every Monday morning he read the Monday Times of six weeks back and so went through the week. On Sunday he read The Observer. Like his habit of dressing for dinner it was a tie to civilization. And it was his pride that no matter how exciting the news was he had never yielded to the temptation of opening a paper before its allotted time. During the war the suspense sometimes had been intolerable, and when he read one day that a push was begun he had undergone agonies of suspense which he might have saved himself by the simple expedient of opening a later paper which lay waiting for him on a shelf. It had been the severest trial to which he had ever exposed himself, but he victoriously surmounted it. And that clumsy fool had broken open those neat tight packages because he wanted to know whether some horrid woman had murdered her odious husband.

Mr. Warburton sent for his boy and told him to bring wrappers. He folded up the papers as neatly as he could, placed a wrapper round each and numbered it. But it was a melancholy task.

“I shall never forgive him,” he said. “Never.”

Of course his boy had been with him on his expedition; he never travelled without him, for his boy knew exactly how he liked things, and Mr. Warburton was not the kind of jungle traveller who was prepared to dispense with his comforts; but in the interval since their arrival he had been gossiping in the servants’ quarters. He had learnt that Cooper had had trouble with his boys. All but the youth Abas had left him. Abas had desired to go too, but his uncle had placed him there on the instructions of the Resident, and he was afraid to leave without his uncle’s permission.

“I told him he had done well, Tuan,” said the boy. “But he is unhappy. He says it is not a good house and he wishes to know if he may go as the others have gone.”

“No, he must stay. The tuan must have servants. Have those who went been replaced?”

“No, Tuan, no one will go.”

Mr. Warburton frowned. Cooper was an insolent fool, but he had an official position and must be suitably provided with servants. It was not seemly that his house should be improperly conducted.

“Where are the boys who ran away?”

“They are in the kampong, Tuan.”

“Go and see them to-night and tell them that I expect them to be back in Tuan Cooper’s house at dawn to-morrow.” “They say they will not go, Tuan.”

“On my order?”

The boy had been with Mr. Warburton for fifteen years, and he knew every intonation of his master’s voice. He was not afraid of him, they had gone through too much together, once in the jungle the Resident had saved his life and once, upset in some rapids, but for him the Resident would have been drowned; but he knew when the Resident must be obeyed without question.

“I will go to the kampong,” he said.

Mr. Warburton expected that his subordinate would take the first opportunity to apologize for his rudeness, but Cooper had the ill-bred man’s inability to express regret; and when they met next morning in the office he ignored the incident. Since Mr. Warburton had been away for three weeks it was necessary for them to have a somewhat prolonged interview. At the end of it Mr. Warburton dismissed him.

“I don’t think there’s anything else, thank you.” Cooper turned to go, but Mr. Warburton stopped him. “I understand you’ve been having some trouble with your boys.”

Cooper gave a harsh laugh.

“They tried to blackmail me. They had the damned cheek to run away, all except that incompetent fellow Abas—he knew when he was well off—but I just sat tight. They’ve all come to heel again.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“This morning they were all back on their jobs, the Chinese cook and all. There they were, as cool as cucumbers; you would have thought they owned the place. I suppose they’d come to the conclusion that I wasn’t such a fool as I looked.”

“By no means. They came back on my express order.” Cooper flushed slightly.

“I should be obliged if you wouldn’t interfere with my private concerns.”

“They’re not your private concerns. When your servants run away it makes you ridiculous. You are perfectly free to make a fool of yourself, but I cannot allow you to be made a fool of. It is unseemly that your house should not be properly staffed. As soon as I heard that your boys had left you, I had them told to be back in their places at dawn. That’ll do.”

Mr. Warburton nodded to signify that the interview was at an end. Cooper took no notice.

“Shall I tell you what I did? I called them and gave the whole bally lot the sack. I gave them ten minutes to get out of the compound.”

Mr. Warburton shrugged his shoulders.

“What makes you think you can get others?”

“I’ve told my own clerk to see about it.”

Mr. Warburton reflected for a moment.

“I think you behaved very foolishly. You will do well to remember in future that good masters make good servants.” “Is there anything else you want to teach me?”

“I should like to teach you manners, but it would be an arduous task, and I have not the time to waste. I will see that you get boys.”

“Please don’t put yourself to any trouble on my account. I’m quite capable of getting them for myself.”

Mr. Warburton smiled acidly. He had an inkling that Cooper disliked him as much as he disliked Cooper, and he knew that nothing is more galling than to be forced to accept the favours of a man you detest.

“Allow me to tell you that you have no more chance of getting Malay or Chinese servants here now than you have of getting an English butler or a French chef. No one will come to you except on an order from me. Would you like me to give it?”

“No.”

“As you please. Good morning.”

Mr. Warburton watched the development of the situation with acrid humour. Cooper’s clerk was unable to persuade Malay, Dyak or Chinese to enter the house of such a master. Abas, the boy who remained faithful to him, knew how to cook only native food, and Cooper, a coarse feeder, found his gorge rise against the everlasting rice. There was no water-carrier, and in that great heat he needed several baths a day. He cursed Abas, but Abas opposed him with sullen resistance and would not do more than he chose. It was galling to know that the lad stayed with him only because the Resident insisted. This went on for a fortnight and then, one morning, he found in his house the very servants whom he had previously dismissed. He fell into a violent rage, but he had learnt a little sense, and this time, without a word, he let them stay. He swallowed his humiliation, but the impatient contempt he had felt for Mr. Warburton’s idiosyncrasies changed into a sullen hatred; the Resident with this malicious stroke had made him the laughing-stock of all the natives.

The two men now held no communication with one another. They broke the time-honoured custom of sharing, notwithstanding personal dislike, a drink at six o’clock with any white man who happened to be at the station. Each lived in his own house as though the other did not exist. Now that Cooper had fallen into the work, it was necessary for them to have little to do with one another in the office. Mr. Warburton used his orderly to send any message he had to give his assistant, and his instructions he sent by formal letter. They saw one another constantly, that was inevitable, but did not exchange half a dozen words in a week. The fact that they could not avoid catching sight of one another got on their nerves. They brooded over their antagonism and Mr. Warburton, taking his daily walk, could think of nothing but how much he detested his assistant.

And the dreadful thing was that in all probability they would remain thus, facing each other in deadly enmity, till Mr. Warburton went on leave. It might be three years. He had no reason to send in a complaint to headquarters: Cooper did his work very well, and at that time men were hard to get. True, vague complaints reached him and hints that the natives found Cooper harsh. There was certainly a feeling of dissatisfaction among them. But when Mr. Warburton looked into specific cases, all he could say was that Cooper had shown severity where mildness would not have been misplaced and had been unfeeling when himself would have been sympathetic. He had done nothing for which he could be taken to task. But Mr. Warburton watched him. Hatred will often make a man clearsighted, and he had a suspicion that Cooper was using the natives without consideration, yet keeping within the law, because he felt that thus he could exasperate his chief. One day perhaps he would go too far. None knew better than Mr. Warburton how irritable the incessant heat could make a man and how difficult it was to keep one’s self-control after a sleepless night. He smiled softly to himself. Sooner or later Cooper would deliver himself into his hand.

When at last the opportunity came Mr. Warburton laughed aloud. Cooper had charge of the prisoners; they made roads, built sheds, rowed when it was necessary to send the prahu up-or down-stream, kept the town clean and otherwise usefully employed themselves. If well-behaved they even on occasion served as house-boys. Cooper kept them hard at it. He liked to see them work. He took pleasure in devising tasks for them; and seeing quickly enough that they were being made to do useless things the prisoners worked badly. He punished them by lengthening their hours. This was contrary to the regulations, and as soon as it was brought to the attention of Mr. Warburton, without referring the matter back to his subordinate, he gave instructions that the old hours should be kept; Cooper, going out for his walk, was astounded to see the prisoners strolling back to the jail; he had given instructions that they were not to knock off till dusk. When he asked the warder in charge why they had left off work he was told that it was the Resident’s bidding.

White with rage he strode to the Fort. Mr. Warburton, in his spotless white ducks and his neat topee, with a walking-stick in his hand, followed by his dogs, was on the point of starting out on his afternoon stroll. He had watched Cooper go and knew that he had taken the road by the river. Cooper jumped up the steps and went straight up to the Resident.

“I want to know what the hell you mean by countermanding my order that the prisoners were to work till six,” he burst out, beside himself with fury.

Mr. Warburton opened his cold blue eyes very wide and assumed an expression of great surprise.

“Are you out of your mind? Are you so ignorant that you do not know that that is not the way to speak to your official superior?”

“Oh, go to hell. The prisoners are my pidgin and you’ve got no right to interfere. You mind your business and I’ll mind mine. I want to know what the devil you mean by making a damned fool of me. Every one in the place will know that you’ve countermanded my order.”

Mr. Warburton kept very cool.

“You had no power to give the order you did. I countermanded it because it was harsh and tyrannical. Believe me, I have not made half such a damned fool of you as you have made of yourself.”

“You disliked me from the first moment I came here. You’ve done everything you could to make the place impossible for me because I wouldn’t lick your boots for you. You got your knife into me because I wouldn’t flatter you.”

Cooper, spluttering with rage, was nearing dangerous ground, and Mr. Warburton’s eyes grew on a sudden colder and more piercing.

“You are wrong. I thought you were a cad, but I was perfectly satisfied with the way you did your work.”

“You snob. You damned snob. You thought me a cad because I hadn’t been to Eton. Oh, they told me in K.S. what to expect. Why, don’t you know that you’re the laughing-stock of the whole country? I could hardly help bursting into a roar of laughter when you told your celebrated story about the Prince of Wales. My God, how they shouted at the club when they told it. By God, I’d rather be the cad I am than the snob you are.”

He got Mr. Warburton on the raw.

“If you don’t get out of my house this minute I shall knock you down,” he cried.

The other came a little closer to him and put his face in his.

“Touch me, touch me,” he said. “By God, I’d like to see you hit me. Do you want me to say it again? Snob. Snob.” Cooper was three inches taller than Mr. Warburton, a strong, muscular young man. Mr. Warburton was fat and fifty-four. His clenched fist shot out. Cooper caught him by the arm and pushed him back.

“Don’t be a damned fool. Remember I’m not a gentleman. I know how to use my hands.”

He gave a sort of hoot, and, grinning all over his pale, sharp face, jumped down the verandah steps. Mr. Warburton, his heart in his anger pounding against his ribs, sank exhausted into a chair. His body tingled as though he had prickly heat. For one horrible moment he thought he was going to cry. But suddenly he was conscious that his head-boy was on the verandah and instinctively regained control of himself. The boy came forward and filled him a glass of whisky and soda. Without a word Mr. Warburton took it and drank it to the dregs.

“What do you want to say to me?” asked Mr. Warburton, trying to force a smile on to his strained lips.

“Tuan, the assistant tuan is a bad man. Abas wishes again to leave him.”

“Let him wait a little. I shall write to Kuala Solor and ask that Tuan Cooper should go elsewhere.”

“Tuan Cooper is not good with the Malays.”

“Leave me.”

The boy silently withdrew. Mr. Warburton was left alone with his thoughts. He saw the club at Kuala Solor, the men sitting round the table in the window in their flannels, when the night had driven them in from golf and tennis, drinking whiskies and gin pahits and laughing when they told the celebrated story of the Prince of Wales and himself at Marienbad. He was hot with shame and misery. A snob! They all thought him a snob. And he had always thought them very good fellows, he had always been gentleman enough to let it make no difference to him that they were of very second-rate position. He hated them now. But his hatred for them was nothing compared with his hatred for Cooper. And if it had come to blows Cooper could have thrashed him. Tears of mortification ran down his red, fat face. He sat there for a couple of hours smoking cigarette after cigarette, and he wished he were dead.

At last the boy came back and asked him if he would dress for dinner. Of course! He always dressed for dinner. He rose wearily from his chair and put on his stiff shirt and the high collar. He sat down at the prettily decorated table and was waited on as usual by the two boys while two others waved their great fans. Over there in the bungalow, two hundred yards away, Cooper was eating a filthy meal clad only in a sarong and a baju. His feet were bare and while he ate he probably read a detective story. After dinner Mr. Warburton sat down to write a letter. The Sultan was away, but he wrote, privately and confidentially, to his representative. Cooper did his work very well, he said, but the fact was that he couldn’t get on with him. They were getting dreadfully on each other’s nerves and he would look upon it as a very great favour if Cooper could be transferred to another post.

He despatched the letter next morning by special messenger. The answer came a fortnight later with the month’s mail. It was a private note and ran as follows:

My dear Warburton:—

I do not want to answer your letter officially and so I am writing you a few lines myself. Of course if you insist I will put the matter up to the Sultan, but I think you would be much wiser to drop it. I know Cooper is a rough diamond, but he is capable, and he had a pretty thin time in the war, and I think he should be given every chance. I think you are a little too much inclined to attach importance to a man's social position. You must remember that times have changed. Of course it's a very good thing for a man to be a gentleman, but it's better that he should be competent and hard-working. I think if you'll exercise a little tolerance you'll get on very well with Cooper.

Yours very sincerely

Richard Temple.

The letter dropped from Mr. Warburton’s hand. It was easy to read between the lines. Dick Temple, whom he had known for twenty years, Dick Temple, who came from quite a good county family, thought him a snob and for that reason had no patience with his request. Mr. Warburton felt on a sudden discouraged with life. The world of which he was a part had passed away, and the future belonged to a meaner generation. Cooper represented it and Cooper he hated with all his heart. He stretched out his hand to fill his glass and at the gesture his head-boy stepped forward.

“I didn’t know you were there.”

The boy picked up the official letter. Ah, that was why he was waiting.

“Does Tuan Cooper go, Tuan?”

“No.”

“There will be a misfortune.”

For a moment the words conveyed nothing to his lassitude. But only for a moment. He sat up in his chair and looked at the boy. He was all attention.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Tuan Cooper is not behaving rightly with Abas.”

Mr. Warburton shrugged his shoulders. How should a man like Cooper know how to treat servants? Mr. Warburton knew the type: he would be grossly familiar with them at one moment and rude and inconsiderate the next.

“Let Abas go back to his family.”

“Tuan Cooper holds back his wages so that he may not run away. He has paid him nothing for three months. I tell him to be patient. But he is angry, he will not listen to reason. If the tuan continues to use him ill there will be a misfortune.”

“You were right to tell me.”

The fool! Did he know so little of the Malays as to think he could safely injure them? It would serve him damned well right if he got a kris in his back. A kris. Mr. Warburton’s heart seemed on a sudden to miss a beat. He had only to let things take their course and one fine day he would be rid of Cooper. He smiled faintly as the phrase, a masterly inactivity, crossed his mind. And now his heart beat a little quicker, for he saw the man he hated lying on his face in a pathway of the jungle with a knife in his back. A fit end for the cad and the bully. Mr. Warburton sighed. It was his duty to warn him and of course he must do it. He wrote a brief and formal note to Cooper asking him to come to the Fort at once.

In ten minutes Cooper stood before him. They had not spoken to one another since the day when Mr. Warburton had nearly struck him. He did not now ask him to sit down.

“Did you wish to see me?” Cooper asked.

He was untidy and none too clean. His face and hands were covered with little red blotches where mosquitoes had bitten him and he had scratched himself till the blood came. His long, thin face bore a sullen look.

“I understand that you are again having trouble with your servants. Abas, my head-boy’s nephew, complains that you have held back his wages for three months. I consider it a most arbitrary proceeding. The lad wishes to leave you, and I certainly do not blame him. I must insist on your paying what is due to him.”

“I don’t choose that he should leave me. I am holding back his wages as a pledge of his good behaviour.”

“You do not know the Malay character. The Malays are very sensitive to injury and ridicule. They are passionate and revengeful. It is my duty to warn you that if you drive this boy beyond a certain point you run a great risk.”

Cooper gave a contemptuous chuckle.

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“I think he’ll kill you.”

“Why should you mind?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t,” replied Mr. Warburton, with a faint laugh. “I should bear it with the utmost fortitude. But I feel the official obligation to give you a proper warning.”

“Do you think I’m afraid of a damned nigger?”

“It’s a matter of entire indifference to me.”

“Well, let me tell you this, I know how to take care of myself; that boy Abas is a dirty, thieving rascal, and if he tries any monkey tricks on me, by God, I’ll wring his bloody neck.” “That was all I wished to say to you,” said Mr. Warburton. “Good evening.”

Mr. Warburton gave him a little nod of dismissal. Cooper flushed, did not for a moment know what to say or do, turned on his heel and stumbled out of the room. Mr. Warburton watched him go with an icy smile on his lips. He had done his duty. But what would he have thought had he known that when Cooper got back to his bungalow, so silent and cheerless, he threw himself down on his bed and in his bitter loneliness on a sudden lost all control of himself? Painful sobs tore his chest and heavy tears rolled down his thin cheeks.

After this Mr. Warburton seldom saw Cooper, and never spoke to him. He read his Times every morning, did his work at the office, took his exercise, dressed for dinner, dined and sat by the river smoking his cheroot. If by chance he ran across Cooper he cut him dead. Each, though never for a moment unconscious of the propinquity, acted as though the other did not exist. Time did nothing to assuage their animosity. They watched one another’s actions and each knew what the other

did. Though Mr. Warburton had been a keen shot in his youth, with age he had acquired a distaste for killing the wild things of the jungle, but on Sundays and holidays Cooper went out with his gun: if he got something it was a triumph over Mr. Warburton; if not, Mr. Warburton shrugged his shoulders and chuckled. These counter-jumpers trying to be sportsmen! Christmas was a bad time for both of them: they ate their dinners alone, each in his own quarters, and they got deliberately drunk. They were the only white men within two hundred miles and they lived within shouting distance of each other. At the beginning of the year Cooper went down with fever, and when Mr. Warburton caught sight of him again he was surprised to see how thin he had grown. He looked ill and worn. The solitude, so much more unnatural because it was due to no necessity, was getting on his nerves. It was getting on Mr. Warburton’s too, and often he could not sleep at night. He lay awake brooding. Cooper was drinking heavily and surely the breaking point was near; but in his dealings with the natives he took care to do nothing that might expose him to his chief’s rebuke. They fought a grim and silent battle with one another. It was a test of endurance. The months passed, and neither gave sign of weakening. They were like men dwelling in regions of eternal night, and their souls were oppressed with the knowledge that never would the day dawn for them. It looked as though their lives would continue for ever in this dull and hideous monotony of hatred.

And when at last the inevitable happened it came upon Mr. Warburton with all the shock of the unexpected. Cooper accused the boy Abas of stealing some of his clothes, and when the boy denied the theft took him by the scruff of the neck and kicked him down the steps of the bungalow. The boy demanded his wages, and Cooper flung at his head every word of abuse he knew. If he saw him in the compound in an hour he would hand him over to the police. Next morning the boy waylaid him outside the Fort when he was walking over to his office, and again demanded his wages. Cooper struck him in the face with his clenched fist. The boy fell to the ground and got up with blood streaming from his nose.

Cooper walked on and set about his work. But he could not attend to it. The blow had calmed his irritation, and he knew that he had gone too far. He was worried. He felt ill, miserable and discouraged. In the adjoining office sat Mr. Warburton, and his impulse was to go and tell him what he had done; he made a movement in his chair, but he knew with what icy scorn he would listen to the story. He could see his patronizing smile. For a moment he had an uneasy fear of what Abas might do. Warburton had warned him all right. He sighed. What a fool he had been! But he shrugged his shoulders impatiently. He did not care; a fat lot he had to live for. It was all Warburton’s fault; if he hadn’t put his back up nothing like this would have happened. Warburton had made life a hell for him from the start. The snob. But they were all like that: it was because he was a Colonial. It was a damned shame that he had never got his commission in the war; he was as good as any one else. They were a lot of dirty snobs. He was damned if he was going to knuckle under now. Of course Warburton would hear of what had happened; the old devil knew everything. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t afraid of any Malay in Borneo, and Warburton could go to blazes.

He was right in thinking that Mr. Warburton would know what had happened. His head-boy told him^when he went in to tiffin.

“Where is your nephew now?”

“I do not know, Tuan. He has gone.”

Mr. Warburton remained silent. After luncheon as a rule he slept a little, but to-day he found himself very wide awake. His eyes involuntarily sought the bungalow where Cooper was now resting.

The idiot! Hesitation for a little was in Mr. Warburton’s mind. Did the man know in what peril he was? He supposed he ought to send for him. But each time he had tried to reason with Cooper, Cooper had insulted him. Anger, furious anger welled up suddenly in Mr. Warburton’s heart, so that the veins on his temples stood out and he clenched his fists. The cad had had his warning. Now let him take what was coming to him. It was no business of his and if anything happened it was not his fault. But perhaps they would wish in Kuala Solor that they had taken his advice and transferred Cooper to another station.

He was strangely restless that night. After dinner he walked up and down the verandah. When the boy went away to his own quarters, Mr. Warburton asked him whether anything had been seen of Abas.

“No, Tuan, I think maybe he has gone to the village of his mother’s brother.”

Mr. Warburton gave him a sharp glance, but the boy was looking down and their eyes did not meet. Mr. Warburton went down to the river and sat in his arbour. But peace was denied him. The river flowed ominously silent. It was like a great serpent gliding with sluggish movement towards the sea. And the trees of the jungle over the water were heavy with a breathless menace. No bird sang. No breeze ruffled the leaves of the cassias. All around him it seemed as though something waited.

He walked across the garden to the road. He had Cooper’s bungalow in full view from there. There was a light in his sitting-room and across the road floated the sound of rag-time. Cooper was playing his gramophone. Mr. Warburton shuddered; he had never got over his instinctive dislike of that instrument. But for that he would have gone over and spoken to Cooper. He turned and went back to his own house. He read late into the night, and at last he slept. But he did not sleep very long, he had terrible dreams, and he seemed to be awakened by a cry. Of course that was a dream too, for no cry—from the bungalow for instance—could be heard in his room. He lay awake till dawn. Then he heard hurried steps and the sound of voices, his head-boy burst suddenly into the room without his fez, and Mr. Warburton’s heart stood still.

“Tuan, Tuan.”

Mr. Warburton jumped out of bed.

“I’ll come at once.”

He put on his slippers, and in his sarong and pyjama-jacket walked across his compound and into Cooper’s. Cooper was lying in bed, with his mouth open, and a kris sticking in his heart. He had been killed in his sleep. Mr. Warburton started, but not because he had not expected to see just such a sight, he started because he felt in himself a sudden glow of exultation. A great burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

Cooper was quite cold. Mr. Warburton took the kris out of the wound, it had been thrust in with such force that he had to use an effort to get it out, and looked at it. He recognized it. It was a kris that a dealer had offered him some weeks before and which he knew Cooper had bought.

“Where is Abas?” he asked sternly.

“Abas is at the village of his mother’s brother.”

The sergeant of the native police was standing at the foot of the bed.

“ Take two men and go to the village and arrest him.”

Mr. Warburton did what was immediately necessary. With set face he gave orders. His words were short and peremptory. Then he went back to the Fort. He shaved and had his bath, dressed and went into the dining-room. By the side of his plate The Times in its wrapper lay waiting for him. He helped himself to some fruit. The head-boy poured out his tea while the second handed him a dish of eggs. Mr. Warburton ate with a good appetite. The head-boy waited.

“What is it?” asked Mr. Warburton.

“Tuan, Abas, my nephew, was in the house of his mother’s brother all night. It can be proved. His uncle will swear that he did not leave the kampong.”

Mr. Warburton turned upon him with a frown.

“Tuan Cooper was killed by Abas. You know it as well as I know it. Justice must be done.”

“Tuan, you would not hang him?”

Mr. Warburton hesitated an instant, and though his voice remained set and stem a change came into his eyes. It was a flicker which the Malay was quick to notice and across his own eyes flashed an answering look of understanding.

“The provocation was very great. Abas will be sentenced to a term of imprisonment.” There was a pause while Mr. Warburton helped himself to marmalade. “When he has served a part of his sentence in prison I will take him into this house as a boy. You can train him in his duties. 1 have no doubt that in the house of Tuan Cooper he got into bad habits.”

“Shall Abas give himself up, Tuan?”

“It would be wise of him.”

The boy withdrew. Mr. Warburton took his Times and neatly slit the wrapper. He loved to unfold the heavy, rustling pages. The morning, so fresh and cool, was delicious and for a moment his eyes wandered out over his garden with a friendly glance. A great weight had been lifted from his mind. He turned to the columns in which were announced the births, deaths, and marriages. That was what he always looked at first. A name he knew caught his attention. Lady Ormskirk had had a son at last. By George, how pleased the old dowager must be! He would write her a note of congratulation by the next mail.

Abas would make a very good house-boy.

That fool Cooper!

THE ROUND DOZEN

I LIKE Elsom. It is a seaside resort in the South of England, not very far from Brighton, and it has something of the late Georgian charm of that agreeable town. But it is neither bustling nor garish. Ten years ago, when I used to go there not infrequently, you might still see here and there an old house, solid and pretentious in no unpleasing fashion (like a decayed gentlewoman of good family whose discreet pride in her ancestry amuses rather than offends you), which was built in the reign of the First Gentleman in Europe and where a courtier of fallen fortunes may well have passed his declining years. The main street had a lackadaisical air and the doctor’s motor seemed a trifle out of place. The housewives did their housekeeping in a leisurely manner. They gossiped with the butcher as they watched him cut from his great joint of South Down a piece of the best end of the neck, and they asked amiably after the grocer’s wife as he put half a pound of tea and a packet of salt into their string bag. I do not know whether Elsom was ever fashionable: it certainly was not so then; but it was respectable and cheap. Elderly ladies, maiden and widowed, lived there, Indian Civilians and retired soldiers: they looked forward with little shudders of dismay to August and September which would bring holiday-makers; but did not disdain to let them their houses and on the proceeds spend a few worldly weeks in a Swiss pension. I never knew Elsom at that hectic time when the lodging-houses were full and young men in blazers sauntered along the front, when Pierrots performed on the beach and in the billiard-room at the Dolphin you heard the click of balls till eleven at night. I only knew it in winter. Then in every house on the seafront, stucco houses with bow-windows built a hundred years ago, there was a sign to inform you that apartments were to let; and the guests of the Dolphin were waited on by a single waiter and the boots. At ten o’clock the porter came into the smoking-room and looked at you in so marked a manner that you got up and went to bed. Then Elsom was a restful place and the Dolphin a very comfortable inn. It was pleasing to think that the Prince Regent drove over with Mrs Fitzherbert more than once to drink a dish of tea in its coffee-room. In the hall was a framed letter from Mr Thackeray ordering a sitting-room and two bedrooms overlooking the sea and giving instructions that a fly should be sent to the station to meet him.

One November, two or three years after the war, having had a bad attack of influenza, I went down to Elsom to regain my strength. I arrived in the afternoon and when I had unpacked my things went for a stroll on the front. The sky was overcast and the calm sea grey and cold. A few seagulls flew close to the shore. Sailing-boats, their masts taken down for the winter, were drawn up high on the shingly beach, and the bathing-huts stood side by side in a long, grey, and tattered row. No one was sitting on the benches that the town council had put here and there, but a few people were trudging up and down for exercise. I passed an old colonel with a red nose who stamped along in plus-fours followed by a terrier, two elderly women in short skirts and stout shoes, and a plain girl in a tam-o’-shanter. I had never seen the front so deserted. The lodging-houses looked like bedraggled old maids waiting for lovers who would never return, and even the friendly Dolphin seemed wan and desolate. My heart sank. Life on a sudden seemed very drab. I returned to the hotel, drew the curtains of my sitting-room, poked the fire, and with a book sought to dispel my melancholy. But I was glad enough when it was time to dress for dinner. I went into the coffee-room and found the guests of the hotel already seated. I gave them a casual glance. There was one lady of middle age by herself and there were two elderly gentlemen, golfers probably, with red faces and baldish heads, who ate their food in moody silence. The only other persons in the room were a group of three who sat in the bow-window, and they immediately attracted my surprised attention. The party consisted of an old gentleman and two ladies, one of whom was old and probably his wife, while the other was younger and possibly his daughter. It was the old lady who first excited my interest. She wore a voluminous dress of black silk and a black lace cap; on her wrists were heavy gold bangles and round her neck a substantial gold chain from which hung a large gold locket; at her neck was a large gold brooch. I did not know that anyone still wore jewellery of that sort. Often, passing second-hand jewellers and pawnbrokers, I had lingered for a moment to look at these strangely old-fashioned articles, so solid, costly, and hideous, and thought with a smile in which there was a tinge of sadness, of the women long since dead who had worn them. They suggested the period when the bustle and the flounce were taking the place of the crinoline and the pork-pie hat was ousting the poke-bonnet. The British people liked things solid and good in those days. They went to church on Sunday morning and after church walked in the Park. They gave dinner-parties of twelve courses where the master of the house carved the beef and the chickens, and after dinner the ladies who could play favoured the company with Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words and the gentleman with the fine baritone voice sang an old English ballad.

The younger woman had her back turned to me and at first I could see only that she had a slim and youthful figure. She had a great deal of brown hair which seemed to be elaborately arranged. She wore a grey dress. The three of them were chatting in low tones and presently she turned her head so that I saw her profile. It was astonishingly beautiful. The nose was straight and delicate, the line of the cheek exquisitely modelled; I saw then that she wore her hair after the manner of Queen Alexandra. The dinner proceeded to its close and the party got up. The old lady sailed out of the room, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and the young one followed her. Then I saw with a shock that she was old. Her frock was simple enough, the skirt was longer than was at that time worn, and there was something slightly old-fashioned in the cut, I dare say the waist was more clearly indicated than was then usual, but it was a girl’s frock. She was tall, like a heroine of Tennyson’s, slight, with long legs and a graceful carriage. I had seen the nose before, it was the nose of a Greek goddess, her mouth was beautiful, and her eyes were large and blue. Her skin was of course a little tight on the bones and there were wrinkles on her forehead and about her eyes, but in youth it must have been lovely. She reminded you of those Roman ladies with features of an exquisite regularity whom Alma-Tadema used to paint, but who, notwithstanding their antique dress, were so stubbornly English. It was a type of cold perfection that one had not seen for five-and-twenty years. Now it is as dead as the epigram. I was like an archaeologist who finds some long-buried statue and I was thrilled in so unexpected a manner to hit upon this survival of a past era. For no day is so dead as the day before yesterday.

The gentleman rose to his feet when the two ladies left, and then resumed his chair. A waiter brought him a glass of heavy port. He smelt it, sipped it, and rolled it round his tongue. I observed him. He was a little man, much shorter than his imposing wife, well-covered without being stout, with a fine head of curling grey hair. His face was much wrinkled and it bore a faintly humorous expression. His lips were tight and his chin was square. He was, according to our present notions, somewhat extravagantly dressed. He wore a black velvet jacket, a frilled shirt with a low collar and a large black tie, and very wide evening trousers. It gave you vaguely the effect of costume. Having drunk his port with deliberation, he got up and sauntered out of the room.

When I passed through the hall, curious to know who these singular people were, I glanced at the visitors’ book. I saw written in an angular feminine hand, the writing that was taught to young ladies in modish schools forty years or so ago, the names: Mr and Mrs Edwin St Clair and Miss Porchester. Their address was given as 68 Leinster Square, Bayswater, London. These must be the names and this the address of the persons who had so much interested me. I asked the manageress who Mr St Clair was and she told me that she believed he was something in the City. I went into the billiard-room and knocked the balls about for a little while and then on my way upstairs passed through the lounge. The two red-faced gentlemen were reading the evening paper and the elderly lady was dozing over a novel. The party of three sat in a corner. Mrs St Clair was knitting, Miss Porchester was busy with embroidery, and Mr St Clair was reading aloud in a discreet but resonant tone. As I passed I discovered that he was reading Bleak House.

I read and wrote most of the next day, but in the afternoon I went for a walk and on my way home I sat down for a little on one of those convenient benches on the sea-front. It was not quite so cold as the day before and the air was pleasant. For want of anything better to do I watched a figure advancing towards me from a distance. It was a man and as he came nearer I saw that it was rather a shabby little man. He wore a thin black greatcoat and a somewhat battered bowler. He walked with his hands in his pockets and looked cold. He gave me a glance as he passed by, went on a few steps, hesitated, stopped and turned back. When he came up once more to the bench on which I sat he took

A hand out of his pocket and touched his hat. I noticed that he wore shabby black gloves, and surmised that he was a widower in straitened circumstances. Or he might have been a mute recovering, like myself, from influenza.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but could you oblige me with a match?”

“Certainly.”

He sat down beside me and while I put my hand in my pocket for matches he hunted in his for cigarettes. He took out a small packet of Gold Flake and his face fell.

“Dear, dear, how very annoying! I haven’t got a cigarette left.”

“Let me offer you one,” I replied, smiling.

I took out my case and he helped himself.

“Gold?” he asked, giving the case a tap as I closed it. “Gold? That’s a thing I never could keep. I’ve had three. All stolen.”

His eyes rested in a melancholy way on his boots, which were sadly in need of repair. He was a wizened little man with a long thin nose and pale-blue eyes. His skin was sallow and he was much lined. I could not tell what his age was; he might have been five-and-thirty or he might have been sixty. There was nothing remarkable about him except his insignificance. But though evidently poor he was neat and clean. He was respectable and he clung to respectability. No, I did not think he was a mute, I thought he was a solicitor’s clerk who had lately buried his wife and been sent to Elsom by an indulgent employer to get over the first shock of his grief.

“Are you making a long stay, sir?” he asked me.

“Ten days or a fortnight.”

“Is this your first visit to Elsom, sir?”

“I have been here before.”

“I know it well, sir. I flatter myself there are very few seaside resorts that I have not been to at one time or another. Elsom is hard to beat, sir. You get a very nice class of people here. There’s nothing noisy or vulgar about Elsom, if you understand what I mean. Elsom has very pleasant recollections for me, sir. I knew Elsom well in bygone days. I was married in St Martin’s Church, sir.”

“Really,” I said feebly.

“It was a very happy marriage, sir.”

“I’m very glad to hear it,” I returned.

“Nine months, that one lasted,” he said reflectively.

Surely the remark was a trifle singular. I had not looked forward with any enthusiasm to the probability which I so clearly foresaw that he would favour me with an account of his matrimonial experiences, but now I waited if not with eagerness at least with curiosity for a further observation. He made none. He sighed a little. At last I broke the silence.

“There don’t seem to be very many people about,” I remarked.

“I like it so. I’m not one for crowds. As I was saying just now, I reckon I’ve spent a good many years at one seaside resort after the other, but I never came in the season. It’s the winter I like.”

“Don’t you find it a little melancholy?”

He turned towards me and placed his black-gloved hand for an instant on my arm.

“It is melancholy. And because it’s melancholy a little ray of sunshine is very welcome.”

The remark seemed to me perfectly idiotic and I did not answer. He withdrew his hand from my arm and got up.

“Well, I mustn’t keep you, sir. Pleased to have made your acquaintance.”

He took off his dingy hat very politely and strolled away. It was beginning now to grow chilly and I thought I would return to the Dolphin. As I reached its broad steps a landau drove up, drawn by two scraggy horses, and from it stepped Mr St Clair. He wore a hat that looked like the unhappy result of a union between a bowler and a top-hat. He gave his hand to his wife and then to his niece. The porter carried in after them rugs and cushions. As Mr St Clair paid the driver I heard him tell him to come at the usual time next day and I understood that the St Clairs took a drive every afternoon in a landau. It would not have surprised me to learn that none of them had ever been in a motor-car.

The manageress told me that they kept very much to themselves and sought no acquaintance among the other persons staying at the hotel. I rode my imagination on a loose rein. I watched them eat three meals a day. I watched Mr and Mrs St Clair sit at the top of the hotel steps in the morning. He read The Times and she knitted. I suppose Mrs St Clair had never read a paper in her life, for they never took anything but The Times and Mr St Clair of course took it with him every day to the City. At about twelve Miss Porchester joined them.

“Have you enjoyed your walk, Eleanor?” asked Mrs St Clair.

“It was very nice, Aunt Gertrude,” answered Miss Porchester.

And I understand that just as Mrs St Clair took “her drive’ every afternoon Miss Porchester took “her walk’ every morning.

“When you have come to the end of your row, my dear,” said Mr St Clair, with a glance at his wife’s knitting, “we might go for a constitutional before luncheon.”

“That will be very nice,” answered Mrs St Clair. She folded up her work and gave it to Miss Porchester. “If you’re going upstairs, Eleanor, will you take my work?”

“Certainly, Aunt Gertrude.”

“I dare say you’re a little tired after your walk, my dear.”

“I shall have a little rest before luncheon.”

Miss Porchester went into the hotel and Mr and Mrs St Clair walked slowly along the sea-front, side by side, to a certain point, and then walked slowly back.

When I met one of them on the stairs I bowed and received an unsmiling, polite bow in return, and in the morning I ventured upon a “good day’ but there the matter ended. It looked as though I should never have a chance to speak to any of them. But presently I thought that Mr St Clair gave me now and then a glance, and thinking he had heard my name I imagined, perhaps vainly, that he looked at me with curiosity. And a day or two after that I was sitting in my room when the porter came in with a message.

“Mr St Clair presents his compliments and could you oblige him with the loan of Whitaker’s Almanack.”

I was astonished.

“Why on earth should he think that I have a Whitaker’s Almanack?

“Well, sir, the manageress told him you wrote.”

I could not see the connexion.

“Tell Mr St Clair that I’m very sorry that I haven’t got a Whitaker”s Almanack, but if I had I would very gladly lend it to him.”

Here was my opportunity. I was by now filled with eagerness to know these fantastic persons more closely. Now and then in the heart of Asia I have come upon a lonely tribe living in a little village among an alien population.

No one knows how they came there or why they settled in that spot. They live their own lives, speak their own language, and have no communication with their neighbours. No one knows whether they are the descendants of a band that was left behind when their nation swept in a vast horde across the continent or whether they are the dying remnant of some great people that in that country once held empire. They are a mystery. They have no future and no history. This odd little family seemed to me to have something of the same character. They were of an era that is dead and gone. They reminded me of persons in one of those leisurely, old-fashioned novels that one’s father read. They belonged to the eighties and they had not moved since then. How extraordinary it was that they could have lived through the last forty years as though the world stood still! They took me back to my childhood and I recollected people who are long since dead. I wonder if it is only distance that gives me the impression that they were more peculiar than anyone is now. When a person was described then as “quite a character,” by heaven, it meant something.

So that evening after dinner I went into the lounge and boldly addressed Mr St Clair.

“I’m sorry I haven’t got a Whitaker’s AlmanackI said, “but if I have any other book that can be of service to you I shall be delighted to lend it to you.”

Mr St Clair was obviously startled. The two ladies kept their eyes on their work. There was an embarrassed hush.

“It does not matter at all, but I was given to understand by the manageress that you were a novelist.”

I racked my brain. There was evidently some connexion between my profession and Whitaker’s Almanack that escaped me.

“In days gone by Mr Trollope used often to dine with us in Leinster Square and I remember him saying that the two most useful books to a novelist were the Bible and Whitaker’s Almanack.”

“I see that Thackeray once stayed in this hotel,” I remarked, anxious not to let the conversation drop.

“I never very much cared for Mr Thackeray, though he dined more than once with my wife’s father, the late Mr Sargeant Saunders. He was too cynical for me. My niece has not read Vanity Fair to this day.”

Miss Porchester blushed slightly at this reference to herself. A waiter brought in the coffee and Mrs St Clair turned to her husband.

“Perhaps, my dear, this gentleman would do us the pleasure to have his coffee with us.”

Although not directly addressed I answered promptly: “Thank you very much.” I sat down.

“Mr Trollope was always my favourite novelist,” said Mr St Clair. “He was so essentially a gentleman. I admire Charles Dickens. But Charles Dickens could never draw a gentleman. I am given to understand that young people nowadays find Mr Trollope a little low. My niece, Miss Porchester, prefers the novels of Mr William Black.”

“I’m afraid I’ve never read any,” I said.

“Ah, I see that you are like me; you are not up to date. My niece once persuaded me to read a novel by a Miss Rhoda Broughton, but I could not manage more than a hundred pages of it.”

“I did not say I liked it, Uncle Edwin,” said Miss Porchester, defending herself, with another blush, “I told you it was rather fast, but everybody was talking about it.”

“I’m quite sure it is not the sort of book your Aunt Gertrude would have wished you to read, Eleanor.”

“I remember Miss Broughton telling me once that when she was young people said her books were fast and when she was old they said they were slow, and it was very hard since she had written exactly the same sort of book for forty years.”

“Oh, did you know Miss Broughton?” asked Miss Porchester, addressing me for the first time. “How very interesting! And did you know Ouida?”

“My dear Eleanor, what will you say next! I’m quite sure you’ve never read anything by Ouida.”

“Indeed, I have, Uncle Edwin. I’ve read Under Two Flags and I liked it very much.”

“You amaze and shock me. I don’t know what girls are coming to nowadays.”

“You always said that when I was thirty you gave me complete liberty to read anything I liked.”

“There is a difference, my dear Eleanor, between liberty and licence,” said Mr St Clair, smiling a little in order not to make his reproof offensive, but with a certain gravity.

I do not know if in recounting this conversation I have managed to convey the impression it gave me of a charming and old-fashioned air. I could have listened all night to them discussing the depravity of an age that was young in the eighteen-eighties. I would have given a good deal for a glimpse of their large and roomy house in Leinster Square. I should have recognized the suite covered in red brocade that stood stiffly about the drawing-room, each piece in its appointed place; and the cabinets filled with Dresden china would have brought me back my childhood. In the dining-room, where they habitually sat, for the drawing-room was used only for parties, was a Turkey carpet and a vast mahogany sideboard “groaning’ with silver. On the walls were the pictures that had excited the admiration of Mrs Humphrey Ward and her uncle Matthew in the Academy of eighteen-eighty.

Next morning, strolling through a pretty lane at the back of Elsom, I met Miss Porchester, who was taking “her walk’. I should have liked to go a little way with her, but felt certain that it would embarrass this maiden of fifty to saunter alone with a man even of my respectable years. She bowed as I passed her and blushed. Oddly enough, a few yards behind her I came upon the funny shabby little man in black gloves with whom I had spoken for a few minutes on the front. He touched his old bowler hat.

“Excuse me, sir, but could you oblige me with a match?” he said.

“Certainly,” I retorted, “but I’m afraid I have no cigarettes on me.”

“Allow me to offer you one of mine,” he said, taking out the paper case. It was empty. “Dear, dear, I haven’t got one either. What a curious coincidence!”

He went on and I had a notion that he a little hastened his steps. I was beginning to have my doubts about him. I hoped he was not going to bother Miss Porchester. For a moment I thought of walking back, but I did not. He was a civil little man and I did not believe he would make a nuisance of himself to a single lady.

I saw him again that very afternoon. I was sitting on the front. He walked towards me with little, halting steps. There was something of a wind and he looked like a dried leaf being driven before it. This time he did not hesitate, but sat down beside me.

“We meet again, sir. The world is a small place. If it will not inconvenience you perhaps you will allow me to rest a few minutes. I am a wee bit tired.”

“This is a public bench, and you have just as much right to sit on it as I.”

I did not wait for him to ask me for a match, but at once offered him a cigarette.

“How very kind of you, sir! I have to limit myself to so many cigarettes a day, but I enjoy those I smoke. As one grows older the pleasures of life diminish, but my experience is that one enjoys more those that remain.”

“That is a very consoling thought.”

“Excuse me, sir, but am I right in thinking that you are the well-known author?”

“I am an author,” I replied. “But what made you think it?”

“I have seen your portrait in the illustrated papers. I suppose you don’t recognize me?”

I looked at him again, a weedy little man in neat but shabby black clothes, with a long nose and watery blue eyes.

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“I dare say I’ve changed,” he sighed. “There was a time when my photograph was in every paper in the United Kingdom. Of course, those press photographers never do you justice. I give you my word, sir, that if I hadn’t seen my name underneath I should never have guessed that some of them were meant for me.”

He was silent for a while. The tide was out and beyond the shingle of the beach was a strip of yellow mud. The breakwaters were half buried in it like the backbones of prehistoric beasts.

“It must be a wonderfully interesting thing to be an author, sir. I’ve often thought I had quite a turn for writing myself. At one time and another I’ve done a rare lot of reading. I haven’t kept up with it much lately. For one thing my eyes are not so good as they used to be. I believe I could write a book if I tried.”

“They say anybody can write one,” I answered.

“Not a novel, you know. I’m not much of a one for novels; I prefer histories and that-like. But memoirs. If anybody was to make it worth my while I wouldn’t mind writing my memoirs.”

“It’s very fashionable just now.”

“There are not many people who’ve had the experiences I’ve had in one way and another. I did write to one of the Sunday papers about it some little while back, but they never answered my letter.”

He gave me a long, appraising look. He had too respectable an air to be about to ask me for half a crown.

“Of course you don’t know who I am, sir, do you?”

“I honestly don’t.”

He seemed to ponder for a moment, then he smoothed down his black gloves on his fingers, looked for a moment at a hole in one of them, and then turned to me not without self-consciousness.

“I am the celebrated Mortimer Ellis,” he said.

“Oh?”

I did not know what other ejaculation to make, for to the best of my belief I had never heard the name before. I saw a look of disappointment come over his face, and I was a trifle embarrassed.

“Mortimer Ellis,” he repeated. “You’re not going to tell me you don’t know.”

“I’m afraid I must. I’m very often out of England.”

I wondered to what he owed his celebrity. I passed over in my mind various possibilities. He could never have been an athlete, which alone in England gives a man real fame, but he might have been a faith-healer or a champion billiard-player. There is of course no one so obscure as a Cabinet Minister out of office and he might have been the President of the Board of Trade in a defunct administration. But he had none of the look of a politician.

“That’s fame for you,” he said bitterly. “Why, for weeks I was the most talked-about man in England. Look at me. You must have seen my photograph in the papers. Mortimer Ellis.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head.

He paused a moment to give his disclosure effectiveness.

“I am the well-known bigamist.”

Now what are you to reply when a person who is practically a stranger to you informs you that he is a well-known bigamist? I will confess that I have sometimes had the vanity to think that I am not as a rule at a loss for a retort, but here I found myself speechless.

“I’ve had eleven wives, sir,” he went on.

“Most people find one about as much as they can manage.”

“Ah, that’s want of practice. When you’ve had eleven there’s very little you don’t know about women.”

“But why did you stop at eleven?”

“There now, I knew you’d say that. The moment I set eyes on you I said to myself, he’s got a clever face. You know, sir, that’s the thing that always grizzles me. Eleven does seem a funny number, doesn’t it? There’s something unfinished about it. Now three anyone might have, and seven’s all right, they say nine’s lucky, and there’s nothing wrong with ten. But eleven! That’s the one thing I regret. I shouldn’t have minded anything if I could have brought it up to the Round Dozen.”

He unbuttoned his coat and from an inside pocket produced a bulging and very greasy pocket-book. From this he took a large bundle of newspaper cuttings; they were worn and creased and dirty. But he spread out two or three.

“Now just you look at those photographs. I ask you, are they like me? It’s an outrage. Why, you’d think I was a criminal to look at them.”

The cuttings were of imposing length. In the opinion of sub-editors Mortimer Ellis had obviously been a news item of value. One was headed, A Much Married Man; another, Heartless Ruffian Brought to Book; a third, Contemptible Scoundrel Meets his Waterloo.

“Not what you would call a good press,” I murmured.

“I never pay any attention to what the newspapers say,” he answered, with a shrug of his thin shoulders. “I’ve known too many journals myself for that. No, it’s the judge I blame. He treated me shocking and it did him no good, mind you; he died within the year.”

I ran my eyes down the report I held.

“I see he gave you five years.”

“Disgraceful, I call it, and see what it says.” He pointed to a place with his forefinger.

“‘Three of his victims pleaded for mercy to be shown to him.’ That shows what they thought of me. And after that he gave me five years. And just look what he called me, a heartless scoundrel-me, the best-hearted man that ever lived-a pest of society and a danger to the public. Said he wished he had the power to give me the cat. I don’t so much mind his giving me five years, though you’ll never get me to say it wasn’t excessive, but I ask you, had he the right to talk to me like that? No, he hadn’t, and I’ll never forgive him, not if I live to be a hundred.”

The bigamist’s cheeks flushed and his watery eyes were filled for a moment with fire. It was a sore subject with him.

“May I read them?” I asked him.

“That’s what I gave them you for. I want you to read them, sir. And if you can read them without saying that I’m a much wronged man, well, you’re not the man I took you for.”

As I glanced through one cutting after another I saw why Mortimer Ellis had so wide an acquaintance with the seaside resorts of England. They were his hunting-ground. His method was to go to some place when the season was over and take apartments in one of the empty lodging-houses. Apparently it did not take him long to make acquaintance with some woman or other, widow or spinster, and I noticed that their ages at the time were between thirty-five and fifty. They stated in the witness-box that they had met him first on the sea-front. He generally proposed marriage to them within a fortnight of this and they were married shortly after. He induced them in one way or another to entrust him with their savings and in a few months, on the pretext that he had to go to London on business, he left them never to return. Only one had ever seen him again till, obliged to give evidence, they saw him in the dock. They were women of a certain respectability; one was the daughter of a doctor and another of a clergyman; there was a lodging-house keeper, there was the widow of a commercial traveller, and there was a retired dressmaker. For the most part, their fortunes ranged from five hundred to a thousand pounds, but whatever the sum the misguided women were stripped of every penny. Some of them told really pitiful stories of the destitution to which they had been reduced. But they all acknowledged that he had been a good husband to them. Not only had three actually pleaded for mercy to be shown him, but one said in the witness-box that, if he was willing to come, she was ready to take him back. He noticed that I was reading this.

“And she’d have worked for me,” he said, “there’s no doubt about that. But I said, better let bygones be bygones. No one likes a cut off the best end of the neck better than I do, but I’m not much of a one for cold roast mutton, I will confess.”

It was only by an accident that Mortimer Ellis did not marry his twelfth wife and so achieve the Round Dozen which I understand appealed to his love of symmetry. For he was engaged to be married to a Miss Hubbard-“two thousand pounds she had, if she had a penny, in war-loan,” he confided to me-and the banns had been read, when one of his former wives saw him, made inquiries, and communicated with the police. He was arrested on the very day before his twelfth wedding.

“She was a bad one, she was,” he told me. “She deceived me something cruel.”

“How did she do that?”

“Well, I met her at Eastbourne, one December it was, on the pier, and she told me in course of conversation that she’d been in the millinery business and had retired. She said she’d made a tidy bit of money. She wouldn’t say exactly how much it was, but she gave me to understand it was something like fifteen hundred pounds. And when I married her, would you believe it, she hadn’t got three hundred. And that’s the one who gave me away. And mind you, I’d never blamed her. Many a man would have cut up rough when he found out he’d been made a fool of. I never showed her that I was disappointed even, I just went away without a word.”

“But not without the three hundred pounds, I take it.”

“Oh come, sir, you must be reasonable,” he returned in an injured tone. “You can’t expect three hundred pounds to last for ever and I’d been married to her for months before she confessed the truth.”

“Forgive my asking,” I said, “and pray don’t think my question suggests a disparaging view of your personal attractions, but-why did they marry you?”

“Because I asked them,” he answered, evidently very much surprised at my inquiry.

“But did you never have any refusals?”

“Very seldom. Not more than four or five in the whole course of my career. Of course I didn’t propose till I was pretty sure of my ground and I don’t say I didn’t draw a blank sometimes. You can’t expect to click every time, if you know what I mean, and I’ve often wasted several weeks making up to a woman before I saw there was nothing doing.”

I surrendered myself for a time to my reflections. But I noticed presently that a broad smile spread over the mobile features of my friend.

“I understand what you mean,” he said. “It’s my appearance that puzzles you. You don’t know what it is they see in me. That’s what comes of reading novels and going to the pictures. You think what women want is the cowboy type, or the romance of old Spain touch, flashing eyes, an olive skin, and a beautiful dancer. You make me laugh.”

“I’m glad,” I said.

“Are you a married man, sir?”

“I am. But I only have one wife.”

“You can’t judge by that. You can’t generalize from a single instance, if you know what I mean. Now, I ask you, what would you know about dogs if you’d never had anything but one bull-terrier?”

The question was rhetorical and I felt sure did not require an answer. He paused for an effective moment and went on.

“You’re wrong, sir. You’re quite wrong. They may take a fancy to a good-looking young fellow, but they don’t want to marry him. They don’t really care about looks.”

“Douglas Jerrold, who was as ugly as he was witty, used to say that if he was given ten minutes’ start with a woman he could cut out the handsomest man in the room.”

“They don’t want wit. They don’t want a man to be funny; they think he’s not serious. They don’t want a man who’s too handsome; they think he’s not serious either. That’s what they want, they want a man who’s serious. Safety first. And then-attention. I may not be handsome and I may not be amusing, but believe me, I’ve got what every woman wants. Poise. And the proof is, I’ve made every one of my wives happy.”

“It certainly is much to your credit that three of them pleaded for mercy to be shown to you and that one was willing to take you back.”

“You don’t know what an anxiety that was to me all the time I was in prison. I thought she’d be waiting for me at the gate when I was released and I said to the Governor: ‘For God’s sake, sir, smuggle me out so as no one can see me.’”

He smoothed his gloves again over his hands and his eye once more fell upon the hole in the first finger.

“That’s what comes of living in lodgings, sir. How’s a man to keep himself neat and tidy without a woman to look after him? I’ve been married too often to be able to get along without a wife. There are men who don’t like being married. I can’t understand them. The fact is, you can’t do a thing really well unless you’ve got your heart in it, and I like being a married man. It’s no difficulty to me to do the little things that women like and that some men can’t be bothered with. As I was saying just now, it’s attention a woman wants. I never went out of the house without giving my wife a kiss and I never came in without giving her another. And it was very seldom I came in without bringing her some chocolates or a few flowers. I never grudged the expense.”

“After all, it was her money you were spending,” I interposed.

“And what if it was? It’s not the money that you’ve paid for a present that signifies, it’s the spirit you give it in. That’s what counts with women. No, I’m not one to boast, but I will say this of myself, I am a good husband.”

I looked desultorily at the reports of the trial which I still held.

“I’ll tell you what surprises me,” I said. “All these women were very respectable, of a certain age, quiet, decent persons. And yet they married you without any inquiry after the shortest possible acquaintance.”

He put his hand impressively on my arm.

“Ah, that’s what you don’t understand, sir. Women have got a craving to be married. It doesn’t matter how young they are or how old they are, if they’re short or tall, dark or fair, they’ve all got one thing in common: they want to be married. And mind you, I married them in church. No woman feels really safe unless she’s married in church. You say I’m no beauty, well, I never thought I was, but if I had one leg and a hump on my back I could find any number of women who’d jump at the chance of marrying me. It’s a mania with them. It’s a disease. Why, there’s hardly one of them who wouldn’t have accepted me the second time I saw her only I like to make sure of my ground before I commit myself. When it all came out there was a rare to-do because I’d married eleven times. Eleven times? Why, it’s nothing, it’s not even a Round Dozen. I could have married thirty times if I’d wanted to. I give you my word, sir, when I consider my opportunities, I’m astounded at my moderation.”

“You told me you were very fond of reading history.”

“Yes, Warren Hastings said that, didn’t he? It struck me at the time I read it. It seemed to fit me like a glove.”

“And you never found these constant courtships a trifle monotonous?”

“Well, sir, I think I’ve got a logical mind, and it always gave me a rare lot of pleasure to see how the same effects followed on the same causes, if you know what I mean. Now, for instance, with a woman who’d never been married before I always passed myself off as a widower. It worked like a charm. You see, a spinster likes a man who knows a thing or two. But with a widow I always said I was a bachelor: a widow’s afraid a man who’s been married before knows too much.”

I gave him back his cuttings; he folded them up neatly and replaced them in his greasy pocket-book.

“You know, sir, I always think I’ve been misjudged. Just see what they say about me: a pest of society, unscrupulous villain, contemptible scoundrel. Now just look at me. I ask you, do I look that sort of man? You know me, you’re a judge of character, I’ve told you all about myself; do you think me a bad man?”

“My acquaintance with you is very slight,” I answered with what I thought considerable tact.

“I wonder if the judge, I wonder if the jury, I wonder if the public ever thought about my side of the question. The public booed me when I was taken into the court and the police had to protect me from their violence. Did any of them think what I’d done for these women?”

“You took their money.”

“Of course I took their money. I had to live the same as anybody has to live. But what did I give them in exchange for their money?”

This was another rhetorical question and though he looked at me as though he expected an answer I held my tongue. Indeed I did not know the answer. His voice was raised and he spoke with emphasis. I could see that he was serious.

“I’ll tell you what I gave them in exchange for their money. Romance. Look at this place.” He made a wide, circular gesture that embraced the sea and the horizon. “There are a hundred places in England like this. Look at that sea and that sky; look at these lodging-houses; look at that pier and the front. Doesn’t it make your heart sink? It’s dead as mutton. It’s all very well for you who come down here for a week or two because you’re run down. But think of all those women who live here from one year’s end to another. They haven’t a chance. They hardly know anyone. They’ve just got enough money to live on and that’s all. I wonder if you know how terrible their lives are. Their lives are just like the front, a long, straight, cemented walk that goes on and on from one seaside resort to another. Even in the season there’s nothing for them. They’re out of it. They might as well be dead. And then I come along. Mind you, I never made advances to a woman who wouldn’t have gladly acknowledged to thirty-five. And I give them love. Why, many of them had never known what it was to have a man do them up behind. Many of them had never known what it was to sit on a bench in the dark with a man’s arm round their waist. I bring them change and excitement. I give them a new pride in themselves. They were on the shelf and I come along quite quietly and I deliberately take them down. A little ray of sunshine in those drab lives, that’s what I was. No wonder they jumped at me, no wonder they wanted me to go back to them. The only one who gave me away was the milliner; she said she was a widow, my private opinion is that she’d never been married at all. You say I did the dirty on them; why, I brought happiness and glamour into eleven lives that never thought they had even a dog’s chance of it again. You say I’m a villain and a scoundrel, you’re wrong. I’m a philanthropist. Five years, they gave me; they should have given me the medal of the Royal Humane Society.”

He took out his empty packet of Gold Flake and looked at it with a melancholy shake of the head. When I handed him my cigarette case he helped himself without a word. I watched the spectacle of a good man struggling with his emotion.

“And what did I get out of it, I ask you?” he continued presently. “Board and lodging and enough to buy cigarettes. But I never was able to save, and the proof is that now, when I’m not so young as I was, I haven’t got half a crown in my pocket.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “It’s a great come-down for me to find myself in this position. I’ve always paid my way and I’ve never asked a friend for a loan in all my life. I was wondering, sir, if you could oblige me with a trifle. It’s humiliating to me to have to suggest it, but the fact is, if you could oblige me with a pound it would mean a great deal to me.”

Well, I had certainly had a pound’s worth of entertainment out of the bigamist and I dived for my pocket-book.

“I shall be very glad,” I said.

He looked at the notes I took out.

“I suppose you couldn’t make it two, sir?”

“I think I could.”

I handed him a couple of pound notes and he gave a little sigh as he took them.

“You don’t know what it means to a man who’s used to the comforts of home life not to know where to turn for a night’s lodging.”

“But there is one thing I should like you to tell me,” I said. “I shouldn’t like you to think me cynical, but I had a notion that women on the whole take the maxim, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive,’ as applicable exclusively to our sex. How did you persuade these respectable, and no doubt thrifty, women to entrust you so confidently with all their savings?”

An amused smile spread over his undistinguished features.

“Well, sir, you know what Shakespeare said about ambition o’erleaping itself. That’s the explanation. Tell a woman you’ll double her capital in six months if she’ll give it you to handle and she won’t be able to give you the money quick enough. Greed, that’s what it is. Just greed.”

It was a sharp sensation, stimulating to the appetite (like hot sauce with ice cream), to go from this diverting ruffian to the respectability, all lavender bags and crinolines, of the St Clairs and Miss Porchester. I spent every evening with them now. No sooner had the ladies left him than Mr St Clair sent his compliments to my table and asked me to drink a glass of port with him. When we had finished it we went into the lounge and drank coffee. Mr St Clair enjoyed his glass of old brandy. The hour I thus spent with them was so exquisitely boring that it had for me a singular fascination. They were told by the manageress that I had written plays.

“We used often to go to the theatre when Sir Henry Irving was at the Lyceum,” said Mr St Clair. “I once had the pleasure of meeting him. I was taken to supper at the Garrick Club by Sir Everard Millais and I was introduced to Mr Irving, as he then was.”

“Tell him what he said to you, Edwin,” said Mrs St Clair.

Mr St Clair struck a dramatic attitude and gave not at all a bad imitation of Henry Irving.

“‘You have the actor’s face, Mr St Clair,’ he said to me. ‘If you ever think of going on the stage, come to me and I will give you a part.’” Mr St Clair resumed his natural manner. “It was enough to turn a young man’s head.”

“But it didn’t turn yours,” I said.

“I will not deny that if I had been otherwise situated I might have allowed myself to be tempted. But I had my family to think of. It would have broken my father’s heart if I had not gone into the business.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“I am a tea merchant, sir. My firm is the oldest in the City of London. I have spent forty years of my life in combating to the best of my ability the desire of my fellow-countrymen to drink Ceylon tea instead of the China tea which was universally drunk in my youth.”

I thought it charmingly characteristic of him to spend a lifetime in persuading the public to buy something they didn’t want rather than something they did.

“But in his younger days my husband did a lot of amateur acting and he was thought very clever,” said Mrs St Clair.

“Shakespeare, you know, and sometimes The School for Scandal I would never consent to act trash. But that is a thing of the past. I had a gift, perhaps it was a pity to waste it, but it’s too late now. When we have a dinner-party I sometimes let the ladies persuade me to recite the great soliloquies of Hamlet. But that is all I do.”

Oh! Oh! Oh! I thought with shuddering fascination of those dinner-parties and wondered whether I should ever be asked to one of them. Mrs St Clair gave me a little smile, half shocked, half prim.

“My husband was very Bohemian as a young man,” she said.

“I sowed my wild oats. I knew quite a lot of painters and writers, Wilkie Collins, for instance, and even men who wrote for the papers. Watts painted a portrait of my wife, and I bought a picture of Millais. I knew a number of the Pre-Raphaelites.”

“Have you a Rossetti?” I asked.

“No. I admired Rossetti’s talent, but I could not approve of his private life. I would never buy a picture by an artist whom I should not care to ask to dinner at my house.”

My brain was reeling when Miss Porchester, looking at her watch, said: “Are you not going to read to us tonight, Uncle Edwin?”

I withdrew.

It was while I was drinking a glass of port with Mr St Clair one evening that he told me the sad story of Miss Porchester. She was engaged to be married to a nephew of Mrs St Clair, a barrister, when it was discovered that he had had an intrigue with the daughter of his laundress.

“It was a terrible thing,” said Mr St Clair. “A terrible thing. But of course my niece took the only possible course. She returned him his ring, his letters, and his photograph, and said that she could never marry him. She implored him to marry the young person he had wronged and said she would be a sister to her. It broke her heart. She has never cared for anyone since.”

“And did he marry the young person?”

Mr St Clair shook his head and sighed.

“No, we were greatly mistaken in him. It has been a sore grief to my dear wife to think that a nephew of hers should behave in such a dishonourable manner. Some time later we heard that he was engaged to a young lady in a very good position with ten thousand pounds of her own. I considered it my duty to write to her father and put the facts before him. He answered my letter in a most insolent fashion. He said he would much rather his son-in-law had a mistress before marriage than after.”

“What happened then?”

“They were married and now my wife’s nephew is one of His Majesty’s Judges of the High Court, and his wife is My Lady. But we’ve never consented to receive them. When my wife’s nephew was knighted Eleanor suggested that we should ask them to dinner, but my wife said that he should never darken our doors and I upheld her.”

“And the laundress’s daughter?”

“She married in her own class of life and has a public-house at Canterbury. My niece, who has a little money of her own, did everything for her and is godmother to her eldest child.”

Poor Miss Porchester. She had sacrificed herself on the altar of Victorian morality and I am afraid the consciousness that she had behaved beautifully was the only benefit she had got from it.

“Miss Porchester is a woman of striking appearance,” I said. “When she was younger she must have been perfectly lovely. I wonder she never married somebody else.”

“Miss Porchester was considered a great beauty. Alma-Tadema admired her so much that he asked her to sit as a model for one of his pictures, but of course we couldn’t very well allow that.” Mr St Clair’s tone conveyed that the suggestion had deeply outraged his sense of decency. “No, Miss Porchester never cared for anyone but her cousin. She never speaks of him and it is now thirty years since they parted, but I am convinced that she loves him still. She is a true woman, my dear sir, one life, one love, and though perhaps I regret that she has been deprived of the joys of marriage and motherhood I am bound to admire her fidelity.”

But the heart of woman is incalculable and rash is the man who thinks she will remain in one stay. Rash, Uncle Edwin. You have known Eleanor for many years, for when, her mother having fallen into a decline and died, you brought the orphan to your comfortable and even luxurious house in Leinster Square, she was but a child; but what, when it comes down to brass tacks, Uncle Edwin, do you really know of Eleanor?

It was but two days after Mr St Clair had confided to me the touching story which explained why Miss Porchester had remained a spinster that, coming back to the hotel in the afternoon after a round of golf, the manageress came up to me in an agitated manner.

“Mr St Clair’s compliments and will you go up to number twenty-seven the moment you come in.”

“Certainly. But why?”

“Oh, there’s a rare upset. They’ll tell you.”

I knocked at the door. I heard a “Come in, come in,” which reminded me that Mr St Clair had played Shakespearean parts in probably the most refined amateur dramatic company in London. I entered and found Mrs St Clair lying on the sofa with a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne on her brow and a bottle of smelling-salts in her hand. Mr St Clair was standing in front of the fire in such a manner as to prevent anyone else in the room from obtaining any benefit from it.

“I must apologize for asking you to come up in this unceremonious fashion, but we are in great distress, and we thought you might be able to throw some light on what has happened.”

His perturbation was obvious.

“What has happened?”

“Our niece, Miss Porchester, has eloped. This morning she sent in a message to my wife that she had one of her sick headaches. When she has one of her sick headaches she likes to be left absolutely alone and it wasn’t till this afternoon that my wife went to see if there was anything she could do for her. The room was empty. Her trunk was packed. Her dressing-case with silver fittings was gone. And on the pillow was a letter telling us of her rash act.”

“I’m very sorry,” I said. “I don’t know exactly what I can do.”

“We were under the impression that you were the only gentleman at Elsom with whom she had any acquaintance.”

His meaning flashed across me.

“I haven’t eloped with her,” I said. “I happen to be a married man.”

“I see you haven’t eloped with her. At the first moment we thought perhaps … but if it isn’t you, who is it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Show him the letter, Edwin,” said Mrs St Clair from the sofa.

“Don’t move, Gertrude. It will bring on your lumbago.”

Miss Porchester had “her’ sick headaches and Mrs St Clair had “her’ lumbago. What had Mr St Clair? I was willing to bet a fiver that Mr St Clair had “his’ gout. He gave me the letter and I read it with an air of decent commiseration.

Dearest Uncle Edwin and Aunt Gertrude

When you receive this I shall be far away. I am going to be married this morning to a gentleman who is very dear to me. I know I am doing wrong in running away like this, but I was afraid you would endeavour to set obstacles in the way of my marriage and since nothing would induce me to change my mind I thought it would save us all much unhappiness if I did it without telling you anything about it. My fiancé is a very retiring man, owing to his long residence in tropical countries not in the best of health, and he thought it much better that we should be married quite privately. When you know how radiantly happy I am I hope you will forgive me. Please send my box to the luggage office at Victoria Station.

Your loving niece, Eleanor

“I will never forgive her,” said Mr St Clair as I returned him the letter. “She shall never darken my doors again. Gertrude, I forbid you ever to mention Eleanor’s name in my hearing.”

Mrs St Clair began to sob quietly.

“Aren’t you rather hard?” I said. “Is there any reason why Miss Porchester shouldn’t marry?”

“At her age,” he answered angrily. “It’s ridiculous. We shall be the laughingstock of everyone in Leinster Square. Do you know how old she is? She’s fifty-one.”

“Fifty-four,” said Mrs St Clair through her sobs.

“She’s been the apple of my eye. She’s been like a daughter to us. She’s been an old maid for years. I think it’s positively improper for her to think of marriage.”

“She was always a girl to us, Edwin,” pleaded Mrs St Clair.

“And who is this man she’s married? It’s the deception that rankles. She must have been carrying on with him under our very noses. She does not even tell us his name. I fear the very worst.”

Suddenly I had an inspiration. That morning after breakfast I had gone out to buy myself some cigarettes and at the tobacconist’s I ran across Mortimer Ellis. I had not seen him for some days.

“You’re looking very spruce,” I said.

His boots had been repaired and were neatly blacked, his hat was brushed, he was wearing a clean collar and new gloves. I thought he had laid out my two pounds to advantage.

“I have to go to London this morning on business,” he said.

I nodded and left the shop.

I remembered that a fortnight before, walking in the country, I had met Miss Porchester and, a few yards behind, Mortimer Ellis. Was it possible that they had been walking together and he had fallen back as they caught sight of me? By heaven, I saw it all.

“I think you said that Miss Porchester had money of her own,” I said.

“A trifle. She has three thousand pounds.”

Now I was certain. I looked at them blankly. Suddenly Mrs St Clair, with a cry, sprang to her feet.

“Edwin, Edwin, supposing he doesn’t marry her?”

Mr St Clair at this put his hand to his head and in a state of collapse sank into a chair.

“The disgrace would kill me,” he groaned.

“Don’t be alarmed,” I said. “He’ll marry her all right. He always does. He’ll marry her in church.”

They paid no attention to what I said. I suppose they thought I’d suddenly taken leave of my senses. I was quite sure now. Mortimer Ellis had achieved his ambition after all. Miss Porchester completed the Round Dozen.

THE HAIRLESS MEXICAN

“DO YOU like macaroni?” said R.

“What do you mean by macaroni?” answered Ashenden. “It is like asking me if I like poetry. I like Keats and Wordsworth and Verlaine and Goethe. When you say macaroni, do you mean spaghetti, tagliatelli, vermicelli, fettuccini, tufali, farfalli, or just macaroni?”

“Macaroni,” replied R., a man of few words.

“I like all simple things, boiled eggs, oysters and caviare, truite au bleu, grilled salmon, roast lamb (the saddle by preference), cold grouse, treacle tart, and rice pudding. But of all simple things the only one I can eat day in and day out, not only without disgust but with the eagerness of an appetite unimpaired by excess, is macaroni.”

“I am glad of that because I want you to go down to Italy.”

Ashenden had come from Geneva to meet R. at Lyons and having got there before him had spent the afternoon wandering about the dull, busy and prosaic streets of that thriving city. They were sitting now in a restaurant on the place to which Ashenden had taken R. on his arrival because it was reputed to give you the best food in that part of France. But since in so crowded a resort (for the Lyonese like a good dinner) you never knew what inquisitive ears were pricked up to catch any useful piece of information that might fall from your lips, they had contented themselves with talking of indifferent things. They had reached the end of an admirable repast.

“Have another glass of brandy?” said R.

“No, thank you,” answered Ashenden, who was of an abstemious turn.

“One should do what one can to mitigate the rigours of war,” remarked R. as he took the bottle and poured out a glass for himself and another for Ashenden.

Ashenden, thinking it would be affectation to protest, let the gesture pass, but felt bound to remonstrate with his chief on the unseemly manner in which he held the bottle.

“In my youth I was always taught that you should take a woman by the waist and a bottle by the neck,” he murmured.

“I am glad you told me. I shall continue to hold a bottle by the waist and give women a wide berth.”

Ashenden did not know what to reply to this and so remained silent. He sipped his brandy and R. called for his bill. It was true that he was an important person, with power to make or mar quite a large number of his fellows, and his opinions were listened to by those who held in their hands the fate of empires; but he could never face the business of tipping a waiter without an embarrassment that was obvious in his demeanour. He was tortured by the fear of making a fool of himself by giving too much or of exciting the waiter’s icy scorn by giving too little. When the bill came he passed some hundred-franc notes over to Ashenden and said:

“Pay him, will you? I can never understand French figures.”

The groom brought them their hats and coats.

“Would you like to go back to the hotel?” asked Ashenden.

“We might as well.”

It was early in the year, but the weather had suddenly turned warm, and they walked with their coats over their arms. Ashenden knowing that R. liked a sitting-room had engaged one for him, and to this, when they reached the hotel, they went. The hotel was old-fashioned and the sitting-room was vast. It was furnished with a heavy mahogany suite upholstered in green velvet and the chairs were set primly round a large table. On the walls, covered with a dingy paper, were large steel engravings of the battles of Napoleon, and from the ceiling hung an enormous chandelier once used for gas, but now fitted with electric bulbs. It flooded the cheerless room with a cold, hard light.

“This is very nice,” said R., as they went in.

“Not exactly cosy,” suggested Ashenden.

“No, but it looks as though it were the best room in the place. It all looks very good to me.”

He drew one of the green velvet chairs away from the table and, sitting down, lit a cigar. He loosened his belt and unbuttoned his tunic.

“I always thought I liked a cheroot better than anything,” he said, “but since the war I’ve taken quite a fancy to Havanas. Oh well, I suppose it can’t last for ever.” The corners of his mouth flickered with the beginning of a smile. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.”

Ashenden took two chairs, one to sit on and one for his feet, and when R. saw him he said: “That’s not a bad idea,” and swinging another chair out from the table with a sigh of relief put his boots on it.

“What room is that next door?” he asked.

“That’s your bedroom.”

“And on the other side?”

“A banqueting hall.”

R. got up and strolled slowly about the room and when he passed the windows, as though in idle curiosity, peeped through the heavy rep curtains that covered them, and then returning to his chair once more comfortably put his feet up.

“It’s just as well not to take any more risk than one need,” he said.

He looked at Ashenden reflectively. There was a slight smile on his thin lips, but the pale eyes, too closely set together, remained cold and steely. R.“s stare would have been embarrassing if Ashenden had not been used to it. He knew that R. was considering how he would broach the subject that he had in mind. The silence must have lasted for two or three minutes.

“I’m expecting a fellow to come and see me tonight,” he said at last. “His train gets in about ten.” He gave his wrist-watch a glance. “He’s known as the Hairless Mexican.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s hairless and because he’s a Mexican.”

“The explanation seems perfectly satisfactory,” said Ashenden.

“He’ll tell you all about himself. He talks nineteen to the dozen. He was on his uppers when I came across him. It appears that he was mixed up in some revolution in Mexico and had to get out with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. They were rather the worse for wear when I found him. If you want to please him you call him General. He claims to have been a general in Huerta’s army, at least I think it was Huerta; anyhow he says that if things had gone right he would be Minister of War now and no end of a big bug. I’ve found him very useful. Not a bad chap. The only thing I really have against him is that he will use scent.”

“And where do I come in?” asked Ashenden.

“He’s going down to Italy. I’ve got rather a ticklish job for him to do and I want you to stand by. I’m not keen on trusting him with a lot of money. He’s a gambler and he’s a bit too fond of the girls. I suppose you came from Geneva on your Ashenden passport?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got another for you, a diplomatic one, by the way, in the name of Somerville with visas for France and Italy. I think you and he had better travel together. He’s an amusing cove when he gets going, and I think you ought to know one another.”

“What is the job?”

“I haven’t yet quite made up my mind how much it’s desirable for you to know about it.”

Ashenden did not reply. They eyed one another in a detached manner, as though they were strangers who sat together in a railway carriage and each wondered who and what the other was.

“In your place I’d leave the General to do most of the talking. I wouldn’t tell him more about yourself than you find absolutely necessary. He won’t ask you any questions, I can promise you that, I think he’s by way of being a gentleman after his own fashion.”

“By the way, what is his real name?”

“I always call him Manuel. I don’t know that he likes it very much, his name is Manuel Carmona.”

“I gather by what you have not said that he’s an unmitigated scoundrel.”

R. smiled with his pale blue eyes.

“I don’t know that I’d go quite as far as that. He hasn’t had the advantages of a public-school education. His ideas of playing the game are not quite the same as yours or mine. I don’t know that I’d leave a gold cigarette-case about when he was in the neighbourhood, but if he lost money to you at poker and had pinched your cigarette-case he would immediately pawn it to pay you.

If he had half a chance he’d seduce your wife, but if you were up against it he’d share his last crust with you. The tears will run down his face when he hears Gounod’s Ave Maria on the gramophone, but if you insult his dignity he’ll shoot you like a dog. It appears that in Mexico it’s an insult to get between a man and his drink and he told me himself that once when a Dutchman who didn’t know passed between him and the bar he whipped out his revolver and shot him dead.”

“Did nothing happen to him?”

“No, it appears that he belongs to one of the best families. The matter was hushed up and it was announced in the papers that the Dutchman had committed suicide. He did practically. I don’t believe the Hairless Mexican has a great respect for human life.”

Ashenden, who had been looking intently at R., started a little and he watched more carefully than ever his chiefs tired, lined, and yellow face. He knew that he did not make this remark for nothing.

“Of course a lot of nonsense is talked about the value of human life. You might just as well say that the counters you use at poker have an intrinsic value. Their value is what you like to make it; for a general giving battle, men are merely counters and he’s a fool if he allows himself for sentimental reasons to look upon them as human beings.”

“But, you see, they’re counters that feel and think and if they believe they’re being squandered they are quite capable of refusing to be used any more.”

“Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. We’ve had information that a man called Constantine Andreadi is on his way from Constantinople with certain documents that we want to get hold of. He’s a Greek. He’s an agent of Enver Pasha and Enver has great confidence in him. He’s given him verbal messages that are too secret and too important to be put on paper. He’s sailing from the Piraeus, on a boat called the Ithaca, and will land at Brindisi on his way to Rome. He’s to deliver his dispatches at the German Embassy and impart what he has to say personally to the ambassador.”

“I see.”

At this time Italy was still neutral; the Central Powers were straining every nerve to keep her so; the Allies were doing what they could to induce her to declare war on their side.

“We don’t want to get into trouble with the Italian authorities, it might be fatal, but we’ve got to prevent Andreadi from getting to Rome.”

“At any cost?” asked Ashenden.

“Money’s no object,” answered R., his lips twisting into a sardonic smile.

“What do you propose to do?”

“I don’t think you need bother your head about that.”

“I have a fertile imagination,” said Ashenden.

“I want you to go down to Naples with the Hairless Mexican. He’s very keen on getting back to Cuba. It appears that his friends are organizing a show and he wants to be as near at hand as possible so that he can hop over to Mexico when things are ripe. He needs cash. I’ve brought money down with me, in American dollars, and I shall give it to you tonight. You’d better carry it on your person.”

“Is it much?”

“It’s a good deal, but I thought it would be easier for you if it wasn’t bulky, so I’ve got it in thousand-dollar notes. You will give the Hairless Mexican the notes in return for the documents that Andreadi is bringing.”

A question sprang to Ashenden’s lips, but he did not ask it. He asked another instead.

“Does this fellow understand what he has to do?”

“Perfectly.”

There was a knock at the door. It opened and the Hairless Mexican stood before them.

“I have arrived. Good evening, Colonel. I am enchanted to see you.”

R. got up.

“Had a nice journey, Manuel? This is Mr Somerville, who’s going to Naples with you, General Carmona.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir.”

He shook Ashenden’s hand with such force that he winced.

“Your hands are like iron, General,” he murmured. The Mexican gave them a glance.

“I had them manicured this morning. I do not think they were very well done. I like my nails much more highly polished.”

They were cut to a point, stained bright red, and to Ashenden’s mind shone like mirrors. Though it was not cold the General wore a fur coat with an astrakhan collar and with his every movement a wave of perfume was wafted to your nose.

“Take off your coat, General, and have a cigar,” said R.

The Hairless Mexican was a tall man, and though thinnish gave you the impression of being very powerful; he was smartly dressed in a blue serge suit, with a silk handkerchief neatly tucked in the breast pocket of his coat, and he wore a gold bracelet on his wrist. His features were good, but a little larger than life-size, and his eyes were brown and lustrous. He was quite hairless. His yellow skin had the smoothness of a woman’s and he had no eyebrows nor eyelashes; he wore a pale brown wig, rather long, and the locks were arranged in artistic disorder. This and the unwrinkled sallow face, combined with his dandified dress, gave him an appearance that was at first glance a trifle horrifying. He was repulsive and ridiculous, but you could not take your eyes from him. There was a sinister fascination in his strangeness.

He sat down and hitched up his trousers so that they should not bag at the knee.

“Well, Manuel, have you been breaking any hearts today?” said R. with his sardonic joviality.

The General turned to Ashenden.

“Our good friend, the Colonel, envies me my successes with the fair sex. I tell him he can have just as many as I if he will only listen to me. Confidence, that is all you need. If you never fear a rebuff you will never have one.”

“Nonsense, Manuel, one has to have your way with the girls. There’s something about you that they can’t resist.”

The Hairless Mexican laughed with a self-satisfaction that he did not try to disguise. He spoke English very well, with a Spanish accent, but with an American intonation.

“But since you ask me, Colonel, I don’t mind telling you that I got into conversation on the train with a little woman who was coming to Lyons to see her mother-in-law. She was not very young and she was thinner than I like a woman to be, but she was possible, and she helped me to pass an agreeable hour,”

“Well, let’s get to business,” said R.

“I am at your service, Colonel.” He gave Ashenden a glance. “Is Mr Somerville a military man?”

“No,” said R., “he’s an author.”

“It takes all sorts to make a world, as you say. I am happy to make your acquaintance, Mr Somerville. I can tell you many stories that will interest you; I am sure that we shall get on well together. You have a sympathetic air. I am very sensitive to that. To tell you the truth I am nothing but a bundle of nerves and if I am with a person who is antipathetic to me I go all to pieces.”

“I hope we shall have a pleasant journey,” said Ashenden.

“When does our friend arrive at Brindisi?” asked the Mexican, turning to R.

“He sails from the Piraeus in the Ithaca on the fourteenth. It’s probably some old tub, but you’d better get down to Brindisi in good time.”

“I agree with you.”

R. got up and with his hands in his pockets sat on the edge of the table. In his rather shabby uniform, his tunic unbuttoned, he looked a slovenly creature beside the neat and well-dressed Mexican.

“Mr Somerville knows practically nothing of the errand on which you are going and I do not desire to tell him anything. I think you had much better keep your own counsel. He is instructed to give you the funds you need for your work, but your actions are your own affair. If you need his advice of course you can ask for it.”

“I seldom ask other people’s advice and never take it.”

“And should you make a mess of things I trust you to keep Mr Somerville out of it. He must on no account be compromised.”

“I am a man of honour, Colonel,” answered the Hairless Mexican with dignity, “and I would sooner let myself be cut in a thousand pieces than betray my friends.”

“That is what I have already told Mr Somerville. On the other hand, if everything pans out O.K. Mr Somerville is instructed to give you the sum we agreed on in return for the papers I spoke to you about. In what manner you get them is no business of his.”

“That goes without saying. There is only one thing I wish to make quite plain; Mr Somerville understands of course that I have not accepted the mission with which you have entrusted me on account of the money?”

“Quite,” replied R. gravely, looking him straight in the eyes.

“I am with the Allies body and soul, I cannot forgive the Germans for outraging the neutrality of Belgium, and if I accept the money that you have offered me it is because I am first and foremost a patriot. I can trust Mr Somerville implicitly, I suppose?”

R. nodded. The Mexican turned to Ashenden.

“An expedition is being arranged to free my unhappy country from the tyrants that exploit and ruin it and every penny that I receive will go on guns and cartridges. For myself I have no need of money; I am a soldier and I can live on a crust and a few olives. There are only three occupations that befit a gentleman, war, cards, and women; it costs nothing to sling a rifle over your shoulder and take to the mountains-and that is real warfare, not this manoeuvring of battalions and firing of great guns-women love me for myself, and I generally win at cards.”

Ashenden found the flamboyance of this strange creature, with his scented handkerchief and his gold bracelet, very much to his taste. This was far from being just the man in the street (whose tyranny we rail at but in the end submit to) and to the amateur of the baroque in human nature he was a rarity to be considered with delight. He was a purple patch on two legs. Notwithstanding his wig and his hairless big face, he had undoubtedly an air; he was absurd, but he did not give you the impression that he was a man to be trifled with. His self-complacency was magnificent.

“Where is your kit, Manuel?” asked R.

It was possible that a frown for an instant darkened the Mexican’s brow at the abrupt question that seemed a little contemptuously to brush to one side his eloquent statement, but he gave no other sign of displeasure. Ashenden suspected that he thought the Colonel a barbarian insensitive to the finer emotions.

“I left it at the station.”

“Mr Somerville has a diplomatic passport so that he can get it through with his own things at the frontier without examination if you like.”

“I have very little, a few suits and some linen, but perhaps it would be as well if Mr Somerville would take charge of it. I bought half a dozen suits of silk pyjamas before I left Paris.”

“And what about you?” asked R., turning to Ashenden.

“I’ve only got one bag. It’s in my room.”

“You’d better have it taken to the station while there’s someone about. Your train goes at one ten.”

“Oh?”

This was the first Ashenden had heard that they were to start that night.

“I think you’d better get down to Naples as soon as possible.”

“Very well.”

R. got up.

“I’m going to bed. I don’t know what you fellows want to do.”

“I shall take a walk about Lyons,” said the Hairless Mexican. “I am interested in life. Lend me a hundred francs, Colonel, will you? I have no change on me.”

R. took out his pocket-book and gave the General the note he asked for. Then to Ashenden:

“What are you going to do? Wait here?”

“No,” said Ashenden, “I shall go to the station and read.”

“You’d both of you better have a whisky and soda before you go, hadn’t you? What about it, Manuel?”

“It is very kind of you, but I never drink anything but champagne and brandy.”

“Mixed?” asked R. dryly.

“Not necessarily,” returned the other with gravity.

R. ordered brandy and soda and when it came, whereas he and Ashenden helped themselves to both, the Hairless Mexican poured himself out three parts of a tumbler of neat brandy and swallowed it in two noisy gulps. He rose to his feet and put on his coat with the astrakhan collar, seized in one hand his bold black hat and, with the gesture of a romantic actor giving up the girl he loves to one more worthy of her, held out the other to R.

“Well, Colonel, I will bid you good night and pleasant dreams. I do not expect that we shall meet again so soon.”

“Don’t make a hash of things, Manuel, and if you do, keep your mouth shut.”

“They tell me that in one of your colleges where the sons of gentlemen are trained to become naval officers it is written in letters of gold: There is no such word as impossible in the British Navy. I do not know the meaning of the word failure.”

“It has a good many synonyms,” retorted R.

“I will meet you at the station, Mr Somerville,” said the Hairless Mexican, and with a flourish left them.

R. looked at Ashenden with that little smile of his that always made his face look so dangerously shrewd.

“Well, what d’you think of him?”

“You’ve got me beat,” said Ashenden. “Is he a mountebank? He seems as vain as a peacock. And with that frightful appearance can he really be the lady’s man he pretends? What makes you think you can trust him?”

R. gave a low chuckle and he washed his thin, old hands with imaginary soap.

“I thought you’d like him. He’s quite a character, isn’t he? I think we can trust him.” R.“s eyes suddenly grew opaque. “I don’t believe it would pay him to double-cross us.” He paused for a moment. “Anyhow we’ve got to risk it. I’ll give you the tickets and the money and then you can take yourself off; I’m all in and I want to go to bed.”

Ten minutes later Ashenden set out for the station with his bag on a porter’s shoulder.

Having nearly two hours to wait he made himself comfortable in the waiting-room. The light was good and he read a novel. When the time drew near for the arrival of the train from Paris that was to take them direct to Rome, and the Hairless Mexican did not appear, Ashenden, beginning to grow a trifle anxious, went out on the platform to look for him. Ashenden suffered from that distressing malady known as train fever: an hour before his train was due he began to have apprehensions lest he should miss it; he was impatient with the porters who would never bring his luggage down from his room in time and he could not understand why the hotel bus cut it so fine; a block in the street would drive him to frenzy and the languid movements of the station porters infuriate him. The whole world seemed in a horrid plot to delay him; people got in his way as he passed through the barriers; others, a long string of them, were at the ticket-office getting tickets for other trains than his and they counted their change with exasperating care; his luggage took an interminable time to register; and then if he was travelling with friends they would go to buy newspapers, or would take a walk along the platform, and he was certain they would be left behind, they would stop to talk to a casual stranger or suddenly be seized with a desire to telephone and disappear at a run. In fact the universe conspired to make him miss every train he wanted to take and he was not happy unless he was settled in his corner, his things on the rack above him, with a good half-hour to spare. Sometimes by arriving at the station too soon he had caught an earlier train than the one he had meant to, but that was nerve-racking and caused him all the anguish of very nearly missing it.

The Rome express was signalled and there was no sign of the Hairless Mexican; it came in and he was not to be seen. Ashenden became more and more harassed. He walked quickly up and down the platform, looked in all the waiting-rooms, went to the consigne where the luggage was left; he could not find him. There were no sleeping-cars, but a number of people got out and he took two seats in a first-class carriage. He stood by the door, looking up and down the platform and up at the clock; it was useless to go if his travelling companion did not turn up, and Ashenden made up his mind to take his things out of the carriage as the porter cried en voiture; but, by George! he would give the brute hell when he found him. There were three minutes more, then two minutes, then one; at that late hour there were few persons about and all who were travelling had taken their seats. Then he saw the Hairless

Mexican, followed by two porters with his luggage and accompanied by a man in a bowler-hat, walk leisurely on to the platform. He caught sight of Ashenden and waved to him.

“Ah, my dear fellow, there you are, I wondered what had become of you.”

“Good God, man, hurry up or we shall miss the train.”

“I never miss a train. Have you got good seats? The chef de gare has gone for the night; this is his assistant.”

The man in the bowler-hat took it off when Ashenden nodded to him.

“But this is an ordinary carriage. I am afraid I could not travel in that.” He turned to the stationmaster’s assistant with an affable smile. “You must do better for me than that, mon cher.”

“Certainement, mon général, I will put you into a salon-lit. Of course.”

The assistant stationmaster led them along the train and opened the door of an empty compartment where there were two beds. The Mexican eyed it with satisfaction and watched the porters arrange the luggage.

“That will do very well. I am much obliged to you.” He held out his hand to the man in the bowler-hat. “I shall not forget you and next time I see the Minister I will tell him with what civility you have treated me.”

“You are too good, General. I shall be very grateful.”

A whistle was blown and the train started.

“This is better than an ordinary first-class carriage, I think, Mr Somerville,” said the Mexican. “A good traveller should learn how to make the best of things.”

But Ashenden was still extremely cross.

“I don’t know why the devil you wanted to cut it so fine. We should have looked a pair of damned fools if we’d missed the train.”

“My dear fellow, there was never the smallest chance of that. When I arrived I told the stationmaster that I was General Carmona, Commander-in-Chief of the Mexican Army, and that I had to stop off in Lyons for a few hours to hold a conference with the British Field-Marshal. I asked him to hold the train for me if I was delayed and suggested that my government might see its way to conferring an order on him. I have been to Lyons before, I like the girls here; they have not the chic of the Parisians, but they have something, there is no denying that they have something. Will you have a mouthful of brandy before you go to sleep?”

“No, thank you,” said Ashenden morosely.

“I always drink a glass before going to bed, it settles the nerves.”

He looked in his suit-case and without difficulty found a bottle. He put it to his lips and had a long drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and lit a cigarette. Then he took off his boots and lay down. Ashenden dimmed the light.

“I have never yet made up my mind,” said the Hairless Mexican reflectively, “whether it is pleasanter to go to sleep with the kisses of a beautiful woman on your mouth or with a cigarette between your lips. Have you ever been to Mexico? I will tell you about Mexico tomorrow. Good night.”

Soon Ashenden heard from his steady breathing that he was asleep and in a little while himself dozed off. Presently he woke. The Mexican, deep in slumber, lay motionless; he had taken off his fur coat and was using it as a blanket; he still wore his wig. Suddenly there was a jolt and the train with a noisy grinding of brakes stopped; in the twinkling of an eye, before Ashenden could realize that anything had happened, the Mexican was on his feet with his hand to his hip.

“What is it?” he cried.

“Nothing. Probably only a signal against us.”

The Mexican sat down heavily on his bed. Ashenden turned on the light. “You wake quickly for such a sound sleeper,” he said.

“You have to in my profession.”

Ashenden would have liked to ask him whether this was murder, conspiracy, or commanding armies, but was not sure that it would be discreet. The General opened his bag and took out the bottle.

“Will you have a nip?” he asked. “There is nothing like it when you wake suddenly in the night.”

When Ashenden refused he put the bottle once more to his lips and poured a considerable quantity of liquor down his throat. He sighed and lit a cigarette. Although Ashenden had seen him now drink nearly a bottle of brandy, and it was probable that he had had a good deal more when he was going about the town, he was certainly quite sober. Neither in his manner nor in his speech was there any indication that he had drunk during the evening anything but lemonade.

The train started and Ashenden again fell asleep. When he awoke it was morning and turning round lazily he saw that the Mexican was awake too. He was smoking a cigarette. The floor by his side was strewn with burnt-out butts and the air was thick and grey. He had begged Ashenden not to insist on opening a window, for he said the night air was dangerous.

“I did not get up, because I was afraid of waking you. Will you do your toilet first or shall I?”

“I’m in no hurry,” said Ashenden.

“I am an old campaigner, it will not take me long. Do you wash your teeth every day?”

“Yes,” said Ashenden.

“So do I. It is a habit I learned in New York. I always think that a fine set of teeth are an adornment to a man.”

There was a wash-basin in the compartment and the General scrubbed his teeth, with gurglings and garglings, energetically. Then he got a bottle of eau-de-Cologne from his bag, poured some of it on a towel and rubbed it over his face and hands. He took a comb and carefully arranged his wig; either it had not moved in the night or else he had set it straight before Ashenden awoke. He got another bottle out of his bag, with a spray attached to it, and squeezing a bulb covered his shirt and coat with a fine cloud of scent, did the same to his handkerchief, and then with a beaming face, like a man who has done his duty by the world and is well pleased, turned to Ashenden and said:

“Now I am ready to brave the day. I will leave my things for you, you need not be afraid of the eau-de-Cologne, it is the best you can get in Paris.”

“Thank you very much,” said Ashenden. “All I want is soap and water.”

“Water? I never use water except when I have a bath. Nothing can be worse for the skin.”

When they approached the frontier, Ashenden, remembering the General’s instinctive gesture when he was suddenly awakened in the night, said to him:

“If you’ve got a revolver on you I think you’d better give it to me. With my diplomatic passport they’re not likely to search me, but they might take it into their heads to go through you and we don’t want to have any bothers.”

“It is hardly a weapon, it is only a toy,” returned the Mexican, taking out of his hip-pocket a fully loaded revolver of formidable dimensions. “I do not like parting with it even for an hour, it gives me the feeling that I am not fully dressed. But you are quite right, we do not want to take any risks; I will give you my knife as well. I would always rather use a knife than a revolver; I think it is a more elegant weapon.”

“I dare say it is only a matter of habit,” answered Ashenden. “Perhaps you are more at home with a knife.”

“Anyone can pull a trigger, but it needs a man to use a knife.”

To Ashenden it looked as though it were in a single movement that he tore open his waistcoat and from his belt snatched and opened a long knife of murderous aspect. He handed it to Ashenden with a pleased smile on his large, ugly, and naked face.

“There’s a pretty piece of work for you, Mr Somerville. I’ve never seen a better bit of steel in my life, it takes an edge like a razor and it’s strong; you can cut a cigarette-paper with it and you can hew down an oak. There is nothing to get out of order and when it is closed it might be the knife a schoolboy uses to cut notches in his desk.”

He shut it with a click and Ashenden put it along with the revolver in his pocket.

“Have you anything else?”

“My hands,” replied the Mexican with arrogance, “but those I dare say the Custom officials will not make trouble about.”

Ashenden remembered the iron grip he had given him when they shook hands and slightly shuddered. They were large and long and smooth; there was not a hair on them or on the wrists, and with the pointed, rosy, manicured nails there was really something sinister about them.

Ashenden and General Carmona went through the formalities at the frontier independently and when they returned to their carriage Ashenden handed back to his companion the revolver and the knife. He sighed.

“Now I feel more comfortable. What do you say to a game of cards?”

“I should like it,” said Ashenden.

The Hairless Mexican opened his bag again and from a corner extracted a greasy pack of French cards. He asked Ashenden whether he played écarté and when Ashenden told him that he did not suggested piquet. This was a game that Ashenden was not unfamiliar with, so they settled the stakes and began. Since both were in favour of quick action, they played the game of four hands, doubling the first and last. Ashenden had good enough cards, but the General seemed notwithstanding always to have better. Ashenden kept his eyes open and he was not careless of the possibility that his antagonist might correct the inequalities of chance, but he saw nothing to suggest that everything was not above board. He lost game after game. He was capoted and rubiconed. The score against him mounted up and up till he had lost something like a thousand francs, which at that time was a tidy sum. The General smoked innumerable cigarettes. He made them himself with a twist of the finger, a lick of his tongue and incredible celerity. At last he flung himself against the back of his seat.

“By the way, my friend, does the British Government pay your card losses when you are on a mission?” he asked.

“It certainly doesn’t.”

“Well, I think you have lost enough. If it went down on your expense account I would have proposed playing till we reached Rome, but you are sympathetic to me. If it is your own money I do not want to win any more of it.”

He picked up the cards and put them aside. Ashenden somewhat ruefully took out a number of notes and handed them to the Mexican. He counted them and with his usual neatness put them carefully folded into his pocket-book. Then, leaning forward, he patted Ashenden almost affectionately on the knee.

“I like you, you are modest and unassuming, you have not the arrogance of your countrymen, and I am sure that you will take my advice in the spirit in which it is meant. Do not play piquet with people you don’t know.”

Ashenden was somewhat mortified and perhaps his face showed it, for the Mexican seized his hand.

“My dear fellow, I have not hurt your feelings? I would not do that for the world. You do not play piquet worse than most piquet players. It is not that. If we were going to be together longer I would teach you how to win at cards. One plays cards to win money and there is no sense in losing.”

“I thought it was only in love and war that all things were fair,” said Ashenden, with a chuckle.

“Ah, I am glad to see you smile. That is the way to take a loss. I see that you have good humour and good sense. You will go far in life. When I get back to Mexico and am in possession of my estates again you must come and stay with me. I will treat you like a king. You shall ride my best horses, we will go to bullfights together, and if there are girls you fancy you have only to say the word and you shall have them.”

He began telling Ashenden of the vast territories, the haciendas and the mines in Mexico, of which he had been dispossessed. He told him of the feudal state in which he lived. It did not matter whether what he said was true or not, for those sonorous phrases of his were fruity with the rich-distilled perfumes of romance. He described a spacious life that seemed to belong to another age and his eloquent gestures brought before the mind’s eye tawny distances and vast green plantations, great herds of cattle and in the moonlit night the song of the blind singers that melted in the air and the twanging of guitars.

“Everything I lost, everything. In Paris I was driven to earn a pittance by giving Spanish lessons or showing Americans–Americanos del Norte, I mean-the night life of the city. I who have flung away a thousand duros on a dinner have been forced to beg my bread like a blind Indian. I who have taken pleasure in clasping a diamond bracelet round the wrist of a beautiful woman have been forced to accept a suit of clothes from a hag old enough to be my mother. Patience. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, but misfortune cannot last for ever. The time is ripe and soon we shall strike our blow.”

He took up the greasy pack of cards and set them out in a number of little piles.

“Let us see what the cards say. They never lie. Ah, if I had only had greater faith in them I should have avoided the only action of my life that has weighed heavily on me. My conscience is at ease. I did what any man would do under the circumstances, but I regret that necessity forced upon me an action that I would willingly have avoided.”

He looked through the cards, set some of them on one side on a system Ashenden did not understand, shuffled the remainder and once more put them in little piles.

“The cards warned me, I will never deny that, their warning was clear and definite. Love and a dark woman, danger, betrayal and death. It was as plain as the nose on your face. Any fool would have known what it meant and I have been using the cards all my life. There is hardly an action that I make without consulting them. There are no excuses. I was besotted. Ah, you of the Northern races do not know what love means, you do not know how it can prevent you from sleeping, how it can take your appetite for food away so that you dwindle as if from a fever, you do not understand what a frenzy it is so that you are like a mad-man and you will stick at nothing to satisfy your desire. A man like me is capable of every folly and every crime when he is in love, si, Señor, and of heroism. He can scale mountains higher than Everest and swim seas broader than the Atlantic. He is god, he is devil. Women have been my ruin.”

Once more the Hairless Mexican glanced at the cards, took some out of the little piles and left others in. He shuffled them again.

“I have been loved by multitudes of women. I do not say it in vanity. I offer no explanation. It is mere matter of fact. Go to Mexico City and ask them what they know of Manuel Carmona and of his triumphs. Ask them how many women have resisted Manuel Carmona.”

Ashenden, frowning a little, watched him reflectively. He wondered whether R., that shrewd fellow who chose his instruments with such a sure instinct, had not this time made a mistake, and he was uneasy. Did the Hairless Mexican really believe that he was irresistible or was he merely a blatant liar? In the course of his manipulations he had thrown out all the cards in the pack but four, and these now lay in front of him face downwards and side by side. He touched them one by one but did not turn them up.

“There is fate,” he said, “and no power on earth can change it. I hesitate. This is a moment that ever fills me with apprehension and I have to steel myself to turn over the cards that may tell me that disaster awaits me. I am a brave man, but sometimes I have reached this stage and not had the courage to look at the four vital cards.”

Indeed now he eyed the backs of them with an anxiety he did not try to hide.

“What was I saying to you?”

“You were telling me that women found your fascinations irresistible,” replied Ashenden dryly.

“Once all the same I found a woman who resisted me. I saw her first in a house, a casa de mujeres in Mexico City, she was going down the stairs as I went up; she was not very beautiful, I had had a hundred more beautiful, but she had something that took my fancy and I told the old woman who kept the house to send her to me. You will know her when you go to Mexico City; they call her La Marqueza. She said that the girl was not an inmate, but came there only from time to time and had left. I told her to have her there next evening and not to let her go till I came. But I was delayed and when I arrived La Marqueza told me that the girl had said she was not used to being kept waiting and had gone. I am a good-natured fellow and I do not mind if women are capricious and teasing, that is part of their charm, so with a laugh I sent her a note of a hundred duros and promised that on the following day I would be punctual. But when I went, on the minute, La Marqueza handed me back my hundred duros and told me the girl did not fancy me. I laughed at her impertinence. I took off the diamond ring I was wearing and told the old woman to give her that and see whether it would induce her to change her mind. In the morning La Marqueza brought me in return for my ring-a red carnation. I did not know whether to be amused or angry. I am not used to being thwarted in my passions, I never hesitate to spend money (what is it for but to squander on pretty women?), and I told La Marqueza to go to the girl and say that I would give her a thousand duros to dine with me that night. Presently she came back with the answer that the girl would come on the condition that I allowed her to go home immediately after dinner. I accepted with a shrug of the shoulders. I did not think she was serious. I thought that she was saying that only to make herself more desired. She came to dinner at my house. Did I say she was not beautiful? She was the most beautiful, the most exquisite creature I had ever met. I was intoxicated. She had charm and she had wit. She had all the gracia of the Andalusian. In one word she was adorable. I asked her why she had treated me so casually and she laughed in my face. I laid myself out to be agreeable. I exercised all my skill. I surpassed myself. But when we finished dinner she rose from her seat and bade me good night. I asked her where she was going. She said I had promised to let her go and she trusted me as a man of honour to keep my word. I expostulated, I reasoned, I raved, I stormed. She held me to my word. All I could induce her to do was to consent to dine with me the following night on the same terms.

“You will think I was a fool, I was the happiest man alive; for seven days I paid her a thousand silver duros to dine with me. Every evening I waited for her with my heart in my mouth, as nervous as a novillero at his first bull-fight, and every evening she played with me, laughed at me, coquetted with me and drove me frantic. I was madly in love with her. I have never loved anyone so much before or since. I could think of nothing else. I was distracted. I neglected everything. I am a patriot and I love my country. A small band of us had got together and made up our minds that we could no longer put up with the misrule from which we were suffering. All the lucrative posts were given to other people, we were being made to pay taxes as though we were tradesmen, and we were exposed to abominable affronts. We had money and men. Our plans were made and we were ready to strike. I had an infinity of things to do, meetings to go to, ammunition to get, orders to give, I was so besotted over this woman that I could attend to nothing.

“You would have thought that I should be angry with her for making such a fool of me, me who had never known what it was not to gratify my smallest whim; I did not believe that she refused me to inflame my desires, I believed that she told the plain truth when she said that she would not give herself to me until she loved me. She said it was for me to make her love me. I thought her an angel. I was ready to wait. My passion was so consuming that sooner or later, I felt, it must communicate itself to her; it was like a fire on the prairie that devours everything around it; and at last-at last she said she loved me. My emotion was so terrific that I thought I should fall down and die. Oh, what rapture! Oh, what madness! I would have given her everything I possessed in the world, I would have torn down the stars from heaven to deck her hair; I wanted to do something to prove to her the extravagance of my love, I wanted to do the impossible, the incredible, I wanted to give her myself, my soul, my honour, all, all I had and all I was; and that night when she lay in my arms I told her of our plot and who we were that were concerned in it. I felt her body stiffen with attention, I was conscious of a flicker of her eyelids, there was something, I hardly knew what, the hand that stroked my face was dry and cold; a sudden suspicion seized me and all at once I remembered what the cards had told me: love and a dark woman, danger, betrayal, and death. Three times they’d said it and I wouldn’t heed. I made no sign that I had noticed anything. She nestled up against my heart and told me that she was frightened to hear such things and asked me if So-and-so was concerned. I answered her. I wanted to make sure. One after the other, with infinite cunning, between her kisses she cajoled me into giving every detail of the plot, and now I was certain, as certain as I am that you sit before me, that she was a spy. She was a spy of the President’s and she had been set to allure me with her devilish charm and now she had wormed out of me all our secrets. The lives of all of us were in her hands and I knew that if she left that room in twenty-four hours we should be dead men. And I loved her, I loved her; oh, words cannot tell you the agony of desire that burned my heart; love like that is no pleasure; it is pain, pain, but the exquisite pain that transcends all pleasure. It is that heavenly anguish that the saints speak of when they are seized with a divine ecstasy. I knew that she must not leave the room alive and I feared that if I delayed my courage would fail me.

“‘I think I shall sleep,’ she said.

“‘Sleep, my dove,’ I answered.

“‘Alma de mi corazon’ she called me. ‘Soul of my heart.’ They were the last words she spoke. Those heavy lids of hers, dark like a grape and faintly humid, those heavy lids of hers closed over her eyes and in a little while I knew by the regular movement of her breast against mine that she slept. You see, I loved her, I could not bear that she should suffer; she was a spy, yes, but my heart bade me spare her the terror of knowing what must happen. It is strange, I felt no anger because she had betrayed me, I should have hated her because of her vileness; I could not, I only felt that my soul was enveloped in night. Poor thing, poor thing. I could have cried in pity for her. I drew my arm very gently from around her, my left arm that was, my right was free, and raised myself on my hand. But she was so beautiful, I turned my face away when I drew the knife with all my strength across her lovely throat. Without awaking she passed from sleep to death.”

He stopped and stared frowning at the four cards that still lay, their backs upward, waiting to be turned up.

“It was in the cards. Why did I not take their warning? I will not look at them. Damn them. Take them away.”

With a violent gesture he swept the whole pack on to the floor.

“Though I am a free-thinker I had masses said for her soul.” He leaned back and rolled himself a cigarette. He inhaled a long breathful of smoke. He shrugged his shoulders. “The Colonel said you were a writer. What do you write?”

“Stories,” replied Ashenden.

“Detective stories?”

“No.”

“Why not? They are the only ones I read. If I were a writer I should write detective stories.”

“They are very difficult. You need an incredible amount of invention. I devised a murder story once, but the murder was so ingenious that I could never find a way of bringing it home to the murderer, and, after all, one of the conventions of the detective story is that the mystery should in the end be solved and the criminal brought to justice.”

“If your murder is as ingenious as you think the only means you have of proving the murderer’s guilt is by the discovery of his motives. When once you have found a motive the chances are that you will hit upon evidence that till then had escaped you. If there is no motive the most damning evidence will be inconclusive. Imagine for instance that you went up to a man in a lonely street on a moonless night and stabbed him to the heart. Who would ever think of you? But if he was your wife’s lover, or your brother, or had cheated or insulted you, then a scrap of paper, a bit of string or a chance remark would be enough to hang you. What were your movements at the time he was killed? Are there not a dozen people who saw you before and after? But if he was a total stranger you would never for a moment be suspected. It was inevitable that Jack the Ripper should escape unless he was caught in the act.”

Ashenden had more than one reason to change the conversation. They were parting at Rome and he thought it necessary to come to an understanding with his companion about their respective movements. The Mexican was going to Brindisi and Ashenden to Naples. He meant to lodge at the Hotel de Belfast, which was a large second-rate hotel near the harbour frequented by commercial travellers and the thriftier kind of tripper. It would be as well to let the General have the number of his room so that he could come up if necessary without inquiring of the porter, and at the next stopping-place Ashenden got an envelope from the station-buffet and made him address it in his own writing to himself at the post-office in Brindisi. All Ashenden had to do then was to scribble a number on a sheet of paper and post it.

The Hairless Mexican shrugged his shoulders.

“To my mind all these precautions are rather childish. There is absolutely no risk. But whatever happens you may be quite sure that I will not compromise you.”

“This is not the sort of job which I’m very familiar with,” said Ashenden. “I’m content to follow the Colonel’s instructions and know no more about it than it’s essential I should.”

“Quite so. Should the exigencies of the situation force me to take a drastic step and I get into trouble I shall of course be treated as a political prisoner. Sooner or later Italy is bound to come into the war on the side of the Allies and I shall be released. I have considered everything. But I beg you very seriously to have no more anxiety about the outcome of our mission than if you were going for a picnic on the Thames.”

But when at last they separated and Ashenden found himself alone in a carriage on the way to Naples he heaved a great sigh of relief. He was glad to be rid of that chattering, hideous, and fantastic creature. He was gone to meet Constantine Andreadi at Brindisi and if half of what he had told Ashenden was true, Ashenden could not but congratulate himself that he did not stand in the Greek spy’s shoes. He wondered what sort of man he was. There was a grimness in the notion of his coming across the blue Ionian, with his confidential papers and his dangerous secrets, all unconscious of the noose into which he was putting his head. Well, that was war, and only fools thought it could be waged with kid gloves on.

Ashenden arrived in Naples and, having taken a room at the hotel, wrote its number on a sheet of paper in block letters and posted it to the Hairless Mexican. He went to the British Consulate, where R. had arranged to send any instructions he might have for him, and found that they knew about him and everything was in order. Then he put aside these matters and made up his mind to amuse himself. Here in the South the spring was well advanced and in the busy streets the sun was hot. Ashenden knew Naples pretty well. The Piazza di San Ferdinando, with its bustle, the Piazza del Plebiscito, with its handsome church, stirred in his heart pleasant recollections. The Strada di Chiara was as noisy as ever. He stood at corners and looked up the narrow alleys that climbed the hill precipitously, those alleys of high houses with the washing set out to dry on lines across the streets like pennants flying to mark a feast-day: and he sauntered along the shore, looking at the burnished sea with

Capri faintly outlined against the bay, till he came to Posilippo, where there was an old, rambling, and bedraggled palazzo in which in his youth he had spent many a romantic hour. He observed the curious little pain with which the memories of the past wrung his heart-strings. Then he took a fly drawn by a small and scraggy pony and rattled back over the stones to the Galleria, where he sat in the cool and drank an americano and looked at the people who loitered there, talking, for ever talking with vivacious gestures, and, exercising his fancy sought from their appearance to divine their reality.

For three days Ashenden led the idle life that fitted so well the fantastical, untidy, and genial city. He did nothing from morning till night but wander at random, looking, not with the eye of the tourist who seeks for what ought to be seen, nor with the eye of the writer who looks for his own (seeing in a sunset a melodious phrase or in a face the inkling of a character), but with that of the tramp to whom whatever happens is absolute. He went to the museum to look at the statue of Agrippina the Younger, which he had particular reasons for remembering with affection, and took the opportunity to see once more the Titian and the Brueghel in the picture gallery. But he always came back to the church of Santa Chiara. Its grace, its gaiety, the airy persiflage with which it seemed to treat religion and at the back of this its sensual emotion; its extravagance, its elegance of line; to Ashenden it seemed to express, as it were in one absurd and grandiloquent metaphor, the sunny, dusty, lovely city and its bustling inhabitants. It said that life was charming and sad; it’s a pity one hadn’t any money but money wasn’t everything, and anyway why bother when we are here today and gone tomorrow, and it was all very exciting and amusing, and after all we must make the best of things: facciamo una piccola combinazione.

But on the fourth morning, when Ashenden, having just stepped out of his bath, was trying to dry himself on a towel that absorbed no moisture, his door was quickly opened and a man slipped into his room.

“What d’you want?” cried Ashenden.

“It’s all right. Don’t you know me?”

“Good Lord, it’s the Mexican. What have you done to yourself?”

He had changed his wig and wore now a black one, close-cropped, that fitted on his head like a cap. It entirely altered the look of him and though this was still odd enough, it was quite different from that which he had borne before. He wore a shabby grey suit.

“I can only stop a minute. He’s getting shaved.”

Ashenden felt his cheeks suddenly redden.

“You found him then?”

“That wasn’t difficult. He was the only Greek passenger on the ship. I went on board when she got in and asked for a friend who had sailed from the Piraeus. I said I had come to meet a Mr George Diogenidis. I pretended to be much puzzled at his not coming, and I got into conversation with Andreadi. He’s travelling under a false name. He calls himself Lombardos. I followed him when he landed and do you know the first thing he did? He went into a barber’s and had his beard shaved. What do you think of that?”

“Nothing. Anyone might have his beard shaved.”

“That is not what I think. He wanted to change his appearance. Oh, he’s cunning. I admire the Germans, they leave nothing to chance, he’s got his whole story pat, but I’ll tell you that in a minute.”

“By the way, you’ve changed your appearance too.”

“Ah, yes, this is a wig I’m wearing; it makes a difference, doesn’t it?”

“I should never have known you.”

“One has to take precautions. We are bosom friends. We had to spend the day in Brindisi and he cannot speak Italian. He was glad to have me help him and we travelled up together. I have brought him to this hotel. He says he is going to Rome tomorrow, but I shall not let him out of my sight; I do not want him to give me the slip. He says that he wants to see Naples and I have offered to show him everything there is to see.”

“Why isn’t he going to Rome today?”

“That is part of the story. He pretends he is a Greek business man who has made money during the war. He says he was the owner of two coasting steamers and has just sold them. Now he means to go to Paris and have his fling. He says he has wanted to go to Paris all his life and at last has the chance. He is close. I tried to get him to talk. I told him I was a Spaniard and had been to Brindisi to arrange communications with Turkey about war material. He listened to me and I saw he was interested, but he told me nothing and of course I did not think it wise to press him. He has the papers on his person.”

“How do you know?”

“He is not anxious about his grip, but he feels every now and then round his middle. They’re either in a belt or in the lining of his vest.”

“Why the devil did you bring him to this hotel?”

“I thought it would be more convenient. We may want to search his luggage.”

“Are you staying here too?”

“No, I am not such a fool as that. I told him I was going to Rome by the night train and would not take a room. But I must go, I promised to meet him outside the barber’s in fifteen minutes.”

“All right.”

“Where shall I find you tonight if I want you?”

Ashenden for an instant eyed the Hairless Mexican, then with a slight frown looked away.

“I shall spend the evening in my room.”

“Very well. Will you just see that there’s nobody in the passage?”

Ashenden opened the door and looked out. He saw no one. The hotel in point of fact at that season was nearly empty. There were few foreigners in Naples and trade was bad.

“It’s all right,” said Ashenden.

The Hairless Mexican walked boldly out. Ashenden closed the door behind him. He shaved and slowly dressed. The sun was shining as brightly as usual on the square and the people who passed, the shabby little carriages with their scrawny horses, had the same air as before, but they did not any longer fill Ashenden with gaiety. He was not comfortable. He went out and called as was his habit at the Consulate to ask if there was a telegram for him. Nothing. Then he went to Cook’s and looked out the trains to Rome: there was one soon after midnight and another at five in the morning. He wished he could catch the first. He did not know what were the Mexican’s plans; if he really wanted to get to Cuba he would do well to make his way to Spain, and, glancing at the notices in the office, Ashenden saw that next day there was a ship sailing from Naples to Barcelona.

Ashenden was bored with Naples. The glare in the streets tired his eyes, the dust was intolerable, the noise was deafening. He went to the Galleria and had a drink. In the afternoon he went to a cinema. Then, going back to his hotel, he told the clerk that since he was starting so early in the morning he preferred to pay his bill at once, and he took his luggage to the station, leaving in his room only a dispatch-case in which were the printed part of his code and a book or two. He dined. Then returning to the hotel he sat down to wait for the Hairless Mexican. He could not conceal from himself the fact that he was exceedingly nervous. He began to read, but the book was tiresome, and he tried another; his attention wandered and he glanced at his watch. It was desperately early; he took up his book again, making up his mind that he would not look at his watch till he had read thirty pages, but though he ran his eyes conscientiously down one page after another he could not tell more than vaguely what it was he read. He looked at the time again. Good God, it was only half past ten. He wondered where the Hairless Mexican was, and what he was doing; he was afraid he would make a mess of things. It was a horrible business. Then it struck him that he had better shut the window and draw the curtains. He smoked innumerable cigarettes. He looked at his watch and it was a quarter past eleven. A thought struck him and his heart began to beat against his chest; out of curiosity he counted his pulse and was surprised to find that it was normal. Though it was a warm night and the room was stuffy his hands and feet were icy. What a nuisance it was, he reflected irritably, to have an imagination that conjured up pictures of things that you didn’t in the least want to see! From his standpoint as a writer he had often considered murder, and his mind went to that fearful description of one in Crime and Punishment. He did not want to think of this topic, but it forced itself upon him; his book dropped to his knees and staring at the wall in front of him (it had a brown wall-paper with a pattern of dingy roses) he asked himself how, if one had to, one would commit a murder in Naples. Of course there was the Villa, the great leafy garden facing the bay in which stood the aquarium; that was deserted at night and very dark; things happened there that did not bear the light of day and prudent persons after dusk avoided its sinister paths. Beyond Posilippo the road was very solitary and there were byways that led up the hill in which by night you would never meet a soul, but how would you induce a man who had any nerves to go there? You might suggest a row in the bay, but the boatman who hired the boat would see you; it was doubtful indeed if he would let you go on the water alone; there were disreputable hotels down by the harbour where no questions were asked of persons who arrived late at night without luggage; but here again the waiter who showed you your room had the chance of a good look at you and you had on entering to sign an elaborate questionnaire.

Ashenden looked once more at the time. He was very tired. He sat now not even trying to read, his mind a blank.

Then the door opened softly and he sprang to his feet. His flesh crept. The Hairless Mexican stood before him.

“Did I startle you?” he asked smiling. “I thought you would prefer me not to knock.”

“Did anyone see you come in?”

“I was let in by the night-watchman; he was asleep when I rang and didn’t even look at me. I’m sorry I’m so late, but I had to change.”

The Hairless Mexican wore now the clothes he had travelled down in and his fair wig. It was extraordinary how different he looked. He was bigger and more flamboyant; the very shape of his face was altered. His eyes were shining and he seemed in excellent spirits. He gave Ashenden a glance.

“How white you are, my friend! Surely you’re not nervous?”

“Have you got the documents?”

“No. He hadn’t got them on him. This is all he had.”

He put down on the table a bulky pocket-book and a passport.

“I don’t want them,” said Ashenden quickly. “Take them.”

With a shrug of the shoulders the Hairless Mexican put the things back in his pocket.

“What was in his belt? You said he kept feeling round his middle.”

“Only money. I’ve looked through the pocket-book. It contains nothing but private letters and photographs of women. He must have locked the documents in his grip before coming out with me this evening.”

“Damn,” said Ashenden.

“I’ve got the key of his room. We’d better go and look through his luggage.”

Ashenden felt a sensation of sickness in the pit of his stomach. He hesitated. The Mexican smiled not unkindly.

“There’s no risk, amigo,” he said, as though he were reassuring a small boy, “but if you don’t feel happy, I’ll go alone.”

“No, I’ll come with you,” said Ashenden.

“There’s no one awake in the hotel and Mr Andreadi won’t disturb us. Take off your shoes if you like.”

Ashenden did not answer. He frowned because he noticed that his hands were slightly trembling. He unlaced his shoes and slipped them off. The Mexican did the same.

“You’d better go first,” he said. “Turn to the left and go straight along the corridor. It’s number thirty-eight.”

Ashenden opened the door and stepped out. The passage was dimly lit. It exasperated him to feel so nervous when he could not but be aware that his companion was perfectly at ease. When they reached the door the Hairless Mexican inserted the key, turned the lock, and went in. He switched on the light. Ashenden followed him and closed the door. He noticed that the shutters were shut.

“Now we’re all right. We can take our time.”

He took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, tried one or two and at last hit upon the right one. The suitcase was filled with clothes.

“Cheap clothes,” said the Mexican contemptuously as he took them out. “My own principle is that it’s always cheaper in the end to buy the best. After all one is a gentleman or one isn’t a gentleman.”

“Are you obliged to talk?” said Ashenden.

“A spice of danger affects people in different ways. It only excites me, but it puts you in a bad temper, amigo.”

“You see, I’m scared and you’re not,” replied Ashenden with candour.

“It’s merely a matter of nerves.”

Meanwhile he felt the clothes, rapidly but with care, as he took them out. There were no papers of any sort in the suitcase. Then he took out his knife and slit the lining. It was a cheap piece and the lining was gummed to the material of which the suitcase was made. There was no possibility of anything being concealed in it.

“They’re not here. They must be hidden in the room.”

“Are you sure he didn’t deposit them in some office? At one of the consulates, for example?”

“He was never out of my sight for a moment except when he was getting shaved.”

The Hairless Mexican opened the drawers and the cupboard. There was no carpet on the floor. He looked under the bed, in it, and under the mattress. His dark eyes shot up and down the room, looking for a hiding-place, and Ashenden felt that nothing escaped him.

“Perhaps he left them in charge of the clerk downstairs?”

“I should have known it. And he wouldn’t dare. They’re not here. I can’t understand it.”

He looked about the room irresolutely. He frowned in the attempt to guess at a solution of the mystery.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Ashenden.

“In a minute.”

The Mexican went down on his knees, quickly and neatly folded the clothes, and packed them up again. He locked the bag and stood up. Then, putting out the light, he slowly opened the door and looked out. He beckoned to Ashenden and slipped into the passage. When Ashenden had followed him he stopped and locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and walked with Ashenden to his room. When they were inside it and the bolt drawn Ashenden wiped his clammy hands and his forehead.

“Thank God, we’re out of that!”

“There wasn’t really the smallest danger. But what are we to do now? The Colonel will be angry that the papers haven’t been found.”

“I’m taking the five o’clock train to Rome. I shall wire for instructions there.”

“Very well, I will come with you.”

“I should have thought it would suit you better to get out of the country more quickly. There’s a boat tomorrow that goes to Barcelona. Why don’t you take that and if necessary I can come to see you there?”

The Hairless Mexican gave a little smile.

“I see that you are anxious to be rid of me. Well, I won’t thwart a wish that your inexperience in these matters excuses. I will go to Barcelona. I have a visa for Spain.”

Ashenden looked at his watch. It was a little after two. He had nearly three hours to wait. His companion comfortably rolled himself a cigarette.

“What do you say to a little supper?” he asked. “I’m as hungry as a wolf.”

The thought of food sickened Ashenden, but he was terribly thirsty. He did not want to go out with the Hairless Mexican, but neither did he want to stay in that hotel by himself.

“Where could one go at this hour?”

“Come along with me. I’ll find you a place.”

Ashenden put on his hat and took his dispatch-case in his hand. They went downstairs. In the hall the porter was sleeping soundly on a mattress on the floor. As they passed the desk, walking softly in order not to wake him, Ashenden noticed in the pigeon-hole belonging to his room a letter. He took it out and saw that it was addressed to him. They tiptoed out of the hotel and shut the door behind them. They then walked quickly away. Stopping after a hundred yards or so under a lamp-post Ashenden took the letter out of his pocket and read; it came from the Consulate and said: The enclosed telegram arrived tonight and in case it is urgent I am sending it round to your hotel by messenger. It had apparently been left some time before midnight while Ashenden was sitting in his room. He opened the telegram and saw that it was in code.

“Well, it’ll have to wait,” he said, putting it back in his pocket.

The Hairless Mexican walked as though he knew his way through the deserted streets and Ashenden walked by his side. At last they came to a tavern in a blind alley, noisome and evil, and this the Mexican entered.

“It’s not the Ritz,” he said, “but at this hour of the night it’s only in a place like this that we stand a chance of getting something to eat.”

Ashenden found himself in a long sordid room at one end of which a wizened young man sat at a piano; there were tables standing out from the wall on each side and against them benches. A number of persons, men and women, were sitting about. They were drinking beer and wine. The women were old, painted, and hideous; and their harsh gaiety was at once noisy and lifeless. When Ashenden and the Hairless Mexican came in they all stared and when they sat down at one of the tables Ashenden looked away in order not to meet the leering eyes, just ready to break into a smile, that sought his insinuatingly. The wizened pianist strummed a tune and several couples got up and began to dance. Since there were not enough men to go round some of the women danced together. The General ordered two plates of spaghetti and a bottle of Capri wine. When the wine was brought he drank a glassful greedily and then waiting for the pasta eyed the women who were sitting at the other tables.

“Do you dance?” he asked Ashenden. “I’m going to ask one of these girls to have a turn with me.”

He got up and Ashenden watched him go up to one who had at least flashing eyes and white teeth to recommend her; she rose and he put his arm round her. He danced well. Ashenden saw him begin talking; the woman laughed and presently the look of indifference with which she had accepted his offer changed to one of interest. Soon they were chatting gaily. The dance came to an end and putting her back at her table he returned to Ashenden and drank another glass of wine.

“What do you think of my girl?” he asked. “Not bad, is she? It does one good to dance. Why don’t you ask one of them? This is a nice place, is it not? You can always trust me to find anything like this. I have an instinct.”

The pianist started again. The woman looked at the Hairless Mexican and when with his thumb he pointed to the floor she jumped up with alacrity. He buttoned up his coat, arched his back, and standing up by the side of the table waited for her to come to him. He swung her off, talking smiling, and already he was on familiar terms with everyone in the room. In fluent Italian, with his Spanish accent, he exchanged badinage with one and the other. They laughed at his sallies. Then the waiter brought two heaped platefuls of macaroni and when the Mexican saw them he stopped dancing without ceremony and, allowing his partner to get back to her table as she chose, hurried to his meal.

“I’m ravenous,” he said. “And yet I ate a good dinner. Where did you dine? You’re going to eat some macaroni, aren’t you?”

“I have no appetite,” said Ashenden.

But he began to eat and to his surprise found that he was hungry. The Hairless Mexican ate with huge mouthfuls, enjoying himself vastly; his eyes shone and he was loquacious. The woman he had danced with had in that short time told him all about herself and he repeated now to Ashenden what she had said. He stuffed huge pieces of bread into his mouth. He ordered another bottle of wine.

“Wine?” he cried scornfully. “Wine is not a drink, only champagne; it does not even quench your thirst. Well, amigo, are you feeling better?”

“I’m bound to say I am,” smiled Ashenden.

“Practice, that is all you want, practice.”

He stretched out his hand to pat Ashenden on the arm.

“What’s that?” cried Ashenden with a start. “What’s that stain on your cuff?”

The Hairless Mexican gave his sleeve a glance.

“That? Nothing. It’s only blood. I had a little accident and cut myself.”

Ashenden was silent. His eyes sought the clock that hung over the door.

“Are you anxious about your train? Let me have one more dance and then I’ll accompany you to the station.”

The Mexican got up and with his sublime self-assurance seized in his arms the woman who sat nearest to him and danced away with her. Ashenden watched him moodily. He was a monstrous, terrible figure, with that blond wig and his hairless face, but he moved with a matchless grace; his feet were small and seemed to hold the ground like the pads of a cat or a tiger; his rhythm was wonderful and you could not but see that the bedizened creature he danced with was intoxicated by his gestures. There was music in his toes and in the long arms that held her so firmly, and there was music in those long legs that seemed to move strangely from the hips. Sinister and grotesque though he was, there was in him now a feline elegance, even something of beauty, and you felt a secret, shameful fascination. To Ashenden he suggested one of those sculptures of the pre-Aztec hewers of stone, in which there is barbarism and vitality, something terrible and cruel, and yet withal a brooding and significant loveliness. All the same he would gladly have left him to finish the night by himself in that sordid dance-hall, but he knew that he must have a business conversation with him. He did not look forward to it without misgiving. He had been instructed to give Manuel Carmona certain sums in return for certain documents. Well, the documents were not forthcoming, and as for the rest-Ashenden knew nothing about that; it was no business of his. The Hairless Mexican waved gaily as he passed him.

“I will come the moment the music stops. Pay the bill and then I shall be ready.”

Ashenden wished he could have seen into his mind. He could not even make a guess at its workings. Then the Mexican, with his scented handkerchief wiping the sweat from his brow, came back.

“Have you had a good time, General?” Ashenden asked him.

“I always have a good time. Poor white trash, but what do I care? I like to feel the body of a woman in my arms and see her eyes grow languid and her lips part as her desire for me melts the marrow in her bones like butter in the sun. Poor white trash, but women.”

They sallied forth. The Mexican proposed that they should walk and in that quarter, at that hour, there would have been little chance of finding a cab; but the sky was starry. It was a summer night and the air was still. The silence walked beside them like the ghost of a dead man. When they neared the station the houses seemed on a sudden to take on a greyer, more rigid line, and you felt that the dawn was at hand. A little shiver trembled through the night. It was a moment of apprehension and the soul for an instant was anxious; it was as though, inherited down the years in their countless millions, it felt a witless fear that perhaps another day would not break. But they entered the station and the night once more enwrapped them. One or two porters lolled about like stagehands after the curtain has rung down and the scene is struck. Two soldiers in dim uniforms stood motionless.

The waiting-room was empty, but Ashenden and the Hairless Mexican went to sit in the most retired part of it.

“I still have an hour before my train goes. I’ll just see what this cable’s about.”

He took it out of his pocket and from the dispatch-case got his code. He was not then using a very elaborate one. It was in two parts, one contained in a slim book, and the other, given him on a sheet of paper and destroyed by him before he left allied territory, committed to memory. Ashenden put on his spectacles and set to work. The Hairless Mexican sat in a corner of the seat, rolling himself cigarettes and smoking; he sat there placidly, taking no notice of what Ashenden did, and enjoyed his well-earned repose. Ashenden deciphered the groups of numbers one by one and as he got it out jotted down each word on a piece of paper. His method was to abstract his mind from the sense till he had finished, since he had discovered that if you took notice of the words as they came along you often jumped to a conclusion and sometimes were led into error. So he translated quite mechanically, without paying attention to the words as he wrote them one after the other. When at last he had done he read the complete message. It ran as follows:

Constantine Andreadi has been detained by illness at Piraeus. He will be unable to sail. Return Geneva and await instructions.

At first Ashenden could not understand. He read it again. He shook from head to foot. Then, for once robbed of his self-possession, he blurted out, in a hoarse, agitated, and furious whisper:

“You bloody fool, you’ve killed the wrong man.”

GIULIA LAZZARI

ASHENDEN was in the habit of asserting that he was never bored. It was one of his notions that only such persons were as had no resources in themselves and it was but the stupid that depended on the outside world for their amusement. Ashenden had no illusions about himself and such success in current letters as had come to him had left his head unturned. He distinguished acutely between fame and the notoriety that rewards the author of a successful novel or a popular play; and he was indifferent to this except in so far as it was attended with tangible benefits. He was perfectly ready to take advantage of his familiar name to get a better state-room on a ship than he had paid for, and if a Customs-house officer passed his luggage unopened because he had read his short stories Ashenden was pleased to admit that the pursuit of literature had its compensations. He sighed when eager young students of the drama sought to discuss its technique with him, and when gushing ladies tremulously whispered in his ear their admiration of his books he often wished he was dead. But he thought himself intelligent and so it was absurd that he should be bored. It was a fact that he could talk with interest to persons commonly thought so excruciatingly dull that their fellows fled from them as though they owed them money. It may be that here he was but indulging the professional instinct that was seldom dormant in him; they, his raw material, did not bore him any more than fossils bore the geologist. And now he had everything that a reasonable man could want for his entertainment. He had pleasant rooms in a good hotel and Geneva is one of the most agreeable cities in Europe to live in. He hired a boat and rowed on the lake or hired a horse and trotted sedately, for in that neat and orderly Canton it is difficult to find a stretch of turf where you can have a good gallop, along the macadamized roads in the environs of the town. He wandered on foot about its old streets, trying among those grey stone houses, so quiet and dignified, to recapture the spirit of a past age. He read again with delight Rousseau’s Confessions, and for the second or third time tried in vain to get on with La Nouvelle Heloïse. He wrote. He knew few people, for it was his business to keep in the background, but he had picked up a chatting acquaintance with several persons living in his hotel and he was not lonely. His life was sufficiently filled, it was varied, and when he had nothing else to do he could enjoy his own reflections; it was absurd to think that under these circumstances he could possibly be bored and yet, like a little lonely cloud in the sky, he did see in the offing the possibility of boredom. There is a story that Louis XIV, having summoned a courtier to attend him on a ceremonial occasion, found himself ready to go as the courtier appeared; he turned to him and with icy majesty said, j’ai failli attendre, of which the only translation I can give, but a poor one, is, I have but just escaped waiting: so Ashenden might have admitted that he now but just escaped being bored.

It might be, he mused, as he rode along the lake on a dappled horse with a great rump and a short neck, like one of those prancing steeds that you see in old pictures, but this horse never pranced and he needed a firm jab with the spur to break even into a smart trot, it might be, he mused, that the great chiefs of the secret service in their London offices, their hands on the throttle of this great machine, led a life full of excitement; they moved their pieces here and there, they saw the pattern woven by the multitudinous threads (Ashenden was lavish with his metaphors,) they made a picture out of the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle; but it must be confessed that for the small fry like himself to be a member of the secret service was not as adventurous an affair as the public thought. Ashenden’s official existence was as orderly and monotonous as a City clerk’s. He saw his spies at stated intervals and paid them their wages; when he could get hold of a new one he engaged him, gave him his instructions and sent him off to Germany; he waited for the information that came through and dispatched it; he went into

France once a week to confer with his colleague over the frontier and to receive his orders from London; he visited the marketplace on market-day to get any message the old butter-woman had brought him from the other side of the lake; he kept his eyes and ears open; and he wrote long reports which he was convinced no one read till having inadvertently slipped a jest into one of them he received a sharp reproof for his levity. The work he was doing was evidently necessary, but it could not be called anything but monotonous. At one moment for something better to do he had considered the possibility of a flirtation with the Baroness von Higgins. He was confident now that she was an agent in the service of the Austrian Government and he looked forward to a certain entertainment in the duel he foresaw. It would be amusing to set his wits against hers. He was quite aware that she would lay snares for him and to avoid them would give him something to keep his mind from rusting. He found her not unwilling to play the game. She wrote him gushing little notes when he sent her flowers. She went for a row with him on the lake and letting her long white hand drag through the water talked of Love and hinted at a Broken Heart. They dined together and went to see a performance in French and in prose of Romeo and Juliet. Ashenden had not made up his mind how far he was prepared to go when he received a sharp note from R. to ask him what he was playing at: information “had come to hand” that he (Ashenden) was much in the society of a woman calling herself the Baroness de Higgins who was known to be an agent of the Central Powers and it was most undesirable that he should be on any terms with her but those of frigid courtesy. Ashenden shrugged his shoulders. R. did not think him as clever as he thought himself. But he was intrigued to discover, what he had not known before, that there was someone in Geneva part of whose duties at all events was to keep an eye on him. There was evidently someone who had orders to see that he did not neglect his work or get into mischief. Ashenden was not a little amused. What a shrewd, unscrupulous old thing was R.! He took no risks; he trusted nobody; he made use of his instruments, but high or low, had no opinion of them. Ashenden looked about to see whether he could spot the person who had told R. what he was doing. He wondered if it was one of the waiters in the hotel. He knew that R. had a great belief in waiters; they had the chance of seeing so much and could so easily get into places where information was lying about to be picked up. He even wondered whether R. had got his news from the Baroness herself; it would not be so strange if after all she was employed by the secret service of one of the Allied nations. Ashenden continued to be polite to the Baroness, but ceased to be attentive.

He turned his horse and trotted gently back to Geneva. An ostler from the riding-stables was waiting at the hotel door and slipping out of the saddle Ashenden went into the hotel. At the desk the porter handed him a telegram. It was to the following effect:

Aunt Maggie not at all well. Staying at Hotel Lotti, Paris. If possible please go and see her. Raymond.

Raymond was one of R.’s facetious noms de guerre, and since Ashenden was not so fortunate as to possess an Aunt Maggie he concluded that this was an order to go to Paris. It had always seemed to Ashenden that R. had spent much of his spare time in reading detective fiction and especially when he was in a good humour he found a fantastic pleasure in aping the style of the shilling shocker. If R. was in a good humour it meant that he was about to bring off a coup, for when he had brought one off he was filled with depression and then vented his spleen on his subordinates.

Ashenden, leaving his telegram with deliberate carelessness on the desk, asked at what time the express left for Paris. He glanced at the clock to see whether he had time to get to the Consulate before it closed and secure his visa. When he went upstairs to fetch his passport the porter, just as the lift doors were closed, called him.

“ Monsieur has forgotten his telegram,” he said.

“How stupid of me,” said Ashenden.

Now Ashenden knew that if an Austrian baroness by any chance wondered why he had so suddenly gone to Paris she would discover that it was owing to the indisposition of a female relative. In those troublous times of war it was just as well that everything should be clear and above board. He was known at the French Consulate and so lost little time there. He had told the porter to get him a ticket and on his return to the hotel bathed and changed. He was not a little excited at the prospect of this unexpected jaunt. He liked the journey. He slept well in a sleeping-car and was not disturbed if a sudden jolt awaked him, it was pleasant to lie a while smoking a cigarette and to feel oneself in one’s little cabin so enchantingly alone; the rhythmical sound as the wheels rattled over the points was an agreeable background to the pattern of one’s reflections, and to speed through the open country and the night made one feel like a star speeding through space. And at the end of the journey was the unknown,

When Ashenden arrived in Paris it was chilly and a light rain was falling, he felt unshaved and he wanted a bath and clean linen; but lie was in excellent spirits. He telephoned from the station to R. and asked how Aunt Maggie was.

“I’m glad to see that your affection for her was great enough to allow you to waste no time in getting here,” answered R., with the ghost of a chuckle in his voice. “She’s very low, but I’m sure it’ll do her good to see you.”

Ashenden reflected that this was the mistake the amateur humorist, as opposed to the professional, so often made; when he made a joke he harped on it. The relations of the joker to his joke should be as quick and desultory as those of a bee to its flower. He should make his joke and pass on. There is of course no harm if, like the bee approaching the flower, he buzzes a little; for it is just as well to announce to a thick-headed world that a joke is intended. But Ashenden, unlike most professional humorists, had a kindly tolerance for other people’s humour and now he answered R. on his own lines.

“When would she like to see me, do you think?” he asked. “Give her my love, won’t you?”

Now R. quite distinctly chuckled. Ashenden sighed.

“She’ll want to titivate a little before you come, I expect. You know what she is, she likes to make the best of herself. Shall we say half-past ten, and then when you’ve had a talk to her we might go out and lunch together somewhere.”

“All right,” said Ashenden. “I’ll come to the Lotti at ten-thirty.”

When Ashenden, clean and refreshed, reached the hotel an orderly whom he recognized met him in the hall and took him up to R.’s apartment. He opened the door and showed Ashenden in. R. was standing with his back to a bright log fire dictating to his secretary.

“Sit down,” said R. and went on with his dictation.

It was a nicely furnished sitting-room and a bunch of roses in a bowl gave the impression of a woman’s hand. On a large table was a litter of papers. R. looked older than when last Ashenden had seen him. His thin yellow face was more lined and his hair was greyer. The work was telling on him. He did not spare himself. He was up at seven every morning and he worked late into the night. His uniform was spick and span, but he wore it shabbily.

“That’ll do,” he said. “Take all this stuff away and get on with the typing. I’ll sign before I go out to lunch.” Then he turned to the orderly. “I don’t want to be disturbed.”

The secretary, a sub-lieutenant in the thirties, obviously a civilian with a temporary commission, gathered up a mass of papers and left the room. As the orderly was following R. said: “Wait outside. If I want you I’ll call.”

“Very good, sir.”

When they were alone R. turned to Ashenden with what for him was cordiality.

“Have a nice journey up?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you think of this?” he asked, looking round the room. “Not bad, is it? I never see why one shouldn’t do what one can to mitigate the hardships of war.”

While he was idly chatting R. gazed at Ashenden with a singular fixity. The stare of those pale eyes of his, too closely set together, gave you the impression that he looked at your naked brain and had a very poor opinion of what he saw there. R. in rare moments of expansion made no secret of the fact that he looked upon his fellow men as fools or knaves. That was one of the obstacles he had to contend with in his calling. On the whole he preferred them knaves; you knew then what you were up against and could take steps accordingly. He was a professional soldier and had spent his career in India and the Colonies. At the outbreak of the war he was stationed in Jamaica and someone in the War Office who had had dealings with him, remembering him, brought him over and put him in the Intelligence Department. His astuteness was so great that he very soon occupied an important post. He had an immense energy and a gift for organization, no scruples, but resource, courage and determination. He had perhaps but one weakness. Throughout his life he had never come in contact with persons, especially women, of any social consequence, the only women he had ever known were the wives of his brother officers, the wives of Government officials and of business men; and when, coming to London at the beginning of the war, his work brought him into contact with brilliant, beautiful and distinguished women he was unduly dazzled. They made him feel shy, but he cultivated their society; he became quite a lady’s man, and to Ashenden who knew more about him than R. suspected that bowl of roses told a story.

Ashenden knew that R. had not sent for him to talk about the weather and the crops, and wondered when he was coming to the point. He did not wonder long.

“You’ve been doing pretty well in Geneva,” he said.

“I’m glad you think that, sir,” replied Ashenden.

Suddenly R. looked very cold and stern. He had done with idle talk.

“I’ve got a job for you,” he said.

Ashenden made no reply, but he felt a happy little flutter somewhere about the pit of his stomach.

“Have you ever heard of Chandra Lai?”

“No, sir.”

A frown of impatience for an instant darkened the Colonel’s brow. He expected his subordinates to know everything he wished them to know.

“Where have you been living all these years?”

“At 36 Chesterfield Street, Mayfair,” returned Ashenden.

The shadow of a smile crossed R.’s yellow face. The somewhat impertinent reply was after his own sardonic heart. He went over to the big table and opened a dispatch-case that lay upon it. He took out a photograph and handed it to Ashenden.

“That’s him.”

To Ashenden, unused to Oriental faces, it looked like any one of a hundred Indians that he had seen. It might have been the photograph of one or other of the Rajahs who come periodically to England and are portrayed in the illustrated papers. It showed a fat-faced, swarthy man, with full lips and a fleshy nose; his hair was black, thick and straight, and his very large eyes even in the photograph were liquid and cow-like. He looked ill-at-ease in European clothes.

“Here he is in native dress,” said R., giving Ashenden another photograph.

This was full-length, whereas the first had shown only the head and shoulders, and it had evidently been taken some years earlier. He was thinner and his great, serious eyes seemed to devour his face. It was done by a native photographer in Calcutta and the surroundings were naively grotesque. Chandra Lai stood against a background on which had been painted a pensive palm tree and a view of the sea. One hand rested on a heavily carved table on which was a rubber-plant in a flowerpot. But in his turban and long, pale tunic he was not without dignity.

“What d’you think of him?” asked R.

“I should have said he was a man not without personality. There is a certain force there.”

“Here’s his dossier. Read it, will you.”

R. gave Ashenden a couple of typewritten pages and Ashenden sat down. R. put on his spectacles and began to read the letters that awaited his signature. Ashenden skimmed the report and then read it a second time more attentively. It appeared that Chandra Lai was a dangerous agitator. He was a lawyer by profession, but had taken up politics and was bitterly hostile to the British rule in India. He was a partisan of armed force and had been on more than one occasion responsible for riots in which life had been lost. He was once arrested, tried and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment; but he was at liberty at the beginning of the war and seizing his opportunity began to foment active rebellion. He was at the heart of plots to embarrass the British in India and so prevent them from transferring troops to the seat of war and with the help of immense sums given to him by German agents he was able to cause a great deal of trouble. He was concerned in two or three bomb outrages which, though beyond killing a few innocent bystanders they did little harm, yet shook the nerves of the public and so damaged its morale. He evaded all attempts to arrest him, his activity was formidable, he was here and there; but the police could never lay hands on him, and they only learned that he had been in some city when, having done his work, he had left it. At last a high reward was offered for his arrest on a charge of murder, but he escaped the country, got to America, from there went to Sweden and eventually reached Berlin. Here he busied himself with schemes to create disaffection among the native troops that had been brought to Europe. All this was narrated drily, without comment or explanation, but from the very frigidity of the narrative you got a sense of mystery and adventure, of hairbreadth escapes and dangers dangerously encountered. The report ended as follows:

“C. has a wife in India and two children. He is not known to have anything to do with women. He neither drinks nor smokes. He is said to be honest. Considerable sums of money have passed through his hands and there has never been any question as to his not having made a proper (!) use of them. He has undoubted courage and is a hard worker. He is said to pride himself on keeping his word.”

Ashenden returned the document to R.

“Well?”

“A fanatic.” Ashenden thought there was about the man something rather romantic and attractive, but he knew that R. did not want any nonsense of that sort from him. “He looks like a very dangerous fellow.”

“He is the most dangerous conspirator in or out of India. He’s done more harm than all the rest of them put together. You know that there’s a gang of these Indians in Berlin; well, he’s the brains of it. If he could be got out of the way I could afford to ignore the others, lie’s the only one who has any guts. I’ve been trying to catch him for a year, I thought there wasn’t a hope; but now at last I’ve got a chance, and by God, I’m going to take it.”

“And what’ll you do then?”

R. chuckled grimly.

“Shoot him and shoot him damn quick.”

Ashenden did not answer. R. walked once or twice across the small room and then, again with his back to the fire, faced Ashenden. His thin mouth was twisted by a sarcastic smile.

“Did you notice at the end of that report I gave you, it said he wasn’t known to have anything to do with women? Well, that was true, but it isn’t any longer. The damned fool has fallen in love.”

R. stepped over to his dispatch-case and took out a bundle tied up with pale blue ribbon.

“Look, here are his love letters. You’re a novelist, it might amuse you to read them. In fact you should read them, it will help you to deal with the situation. Take them away with you.” R. flung the neat little bundle back into the dispatch-case. “One wonders how an able man like that can allow himself to get besotted over a woman. It was the last thing I ever expected of him.”

Ashenden’s eyes travelled to that bowl of beautiful roses that stood on the table, but he said nothing. R. who missed little saw the glance and his look suddenly darkened. Ashenden knew that he felt like asking him what the devil he was staring at. At that moment R. had no friendly feelings towards his subordinate, but he made no remark. He went back to the subject on hand.

“Anyhow that’s neither here nor there. Chandra has fallen madly in love with a woman called Giulia Lazzari. He’s crazy about her.”

“Do you know how he picked her up?”

“Of course I do. She’s a dancer, and she does Spanish dances, but she happens to be an Italian. For stage purposes she calls herself La Malaguena. You know the kind of thing. Popular Spanish music and a mantilla, a fan and a high comb. She’s been dancing all over Europe for the last ten years.”

“Is she any good?”

“No, rotten. She’s been in the provinces in England and she’s had a few engagements in London. She never got more than ten pounds a week. Chandra met her in Berlin in a Tingel-tangel, you know what that is, a cheap sort of music-hall. I take it that on the Continent she looked upon her dancing chiefly as a means to enhance her value as a prostitute.”

“How did she get to Berlin during the war?”

“She’d been married to a Spaniard at one time, I think she still is though they don’t live together, and she travelled on a Spanish passport. It appears Chandra made a dead set for her.” R. took up the Indian’s photograph again and looked at it thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t have thought there was anything very attractive in that greasy little nigger. God, how they run to fat! The fact remains that she fell very nearly as much in love with him as he did with her. I’ve got her letters too, only copies, of course, he’s got the originals and I daresay he keeps them tied up in pink ribbon. She’s mad about him. I’m not a literary man, but I think 1 know when a thing rings true, anyhow you’ll be reading them, and you can tell me what you think. And then people say there’s no such tiling as love at first sight.”

R. smiled with faint irony. lie was certainly in a good humour this morning.

“But how did you get hold of all these letters?”

“How did I get hold of them? How do you imagine? Owing to her Italian nationality Giulia Lazzari was eventually expelled from Germany. She was put over the Dutch frontier. Having an engagement to dance in England she was granted a visa and”—R. looked up a date among the papers,—“and on the twenty-fourth of October last sailed from Rotterdam to

Harwich. Since then she has danced in London, Birmingham, Portsmouth and other places. She was arrested a fortnight ago at Hull.”

“What for?”

“Espionage. She was transferred to London and I went to see her myself at Holloway.”

Ashenden and R. looked at one another for a moment without speaking and it may be that each was trying his hardest to read the other’s thoughts. Ashenden was wondering where the truth in all this lay and R. wondered how much of it he could advantageously tell him.

“How did you get on to her?”

“I thought it odd that the Germans should allow her to dance quite quietly in Berlin for weeks and then for no particular reason decide to put her out of the country. It would be a good introduction for espionage. And a dancer who was not too careful of her virtue might make opportunities of learning things that it would be worth somebody’s while in Berlin to pay a good price for. I thought it might be as well to let her come to England and see what she was up to. I kept track of her. I discovered that she was sending letters to an address in Holland two or three times a week and two or three times a week was receiving answers from Holland. Hers were written in a queer mixture of French, German and English, she speaks English a little and French quite well, but the answers were written entirely in English; it was good English, but not an Englishman’s English, flowery and rather grandiloquent; 1 wondered who was writing them. They seemed to be just ordinary love-letters, but they were by way of being rather hot stuff. It was plain enough that they were coming from Germany and the writer was neither English, French, nor German. Why did he write in English? The only foreigners who know English better than any continental language are Orientals, and not Turks or Egyptians either; they know French. A Jap would write English and so would an Indian. I came to the conclusion that Giulia’s lover was one of that gang of Indians that were making trouble for us in Berlin. I had no idea it was Chandra Lai till I found the photograph.”

“How did you get that?”

“She carried it about with her. It was a pretty good bit of work, that. She kept it locked up in her trunk, with a lot of theatrical photographs, of comic singers and clowns and acrobats, it might easily have passed for the picture of some music-hall artiste in his stage dress. In fact, later, when she was arrested and asked who the photograph represented she said she didn’t know, it was an Indian conjuror who had given it her and she had no idea what his name was. Anyhow I put a very smart lad on the job and he thought it queer that it should be the only photograph in the lot that came from Calcutta. He noticed that there was a number on the back, and he took it, the number, I mean; of course the photograph was replaced in the box.”

“By the way, just as a matter of interest how did your very smart lad get at the photograph at all?”

R.’s eyes twinkled.

“That’s none of your business. But I don’t mind telling you that he was a good-looking boy. Anyhow it’s of no consequence. When we got the number of the photograph we cabled to Calcutta and in a little while I received the grateful news that the object of Giulia’s affections was no less a person than the incorruptible Chandra Lai. Then I thought it my duty to have Giulia watched a little more carefully. She seemed to have a sneaking fondness for naval officers. I couldn’t exactly blame her for that, they are attractive, but it is unwise for ladies of easy virtue and doubtful nationality to cultivate their society in war-time. Presently I got a very pretty little body of evidence against her.”

“How was she getting her stuff through?”

“She wasn’t getting it through. She wasn’t trying to. The Germans had turned her out quite genuinely, she wasn’t working for them, she was working for Chandra. After her engagement was through in England she was planning to go to Holland again and meet him. She wasn’t very clever at the work, she was nervous, but it looked easy, no one seemed to bother about her, it grew rather exciting, she was getting all sorts of interesting information without any risk. In one of her letters she said: * I have so much to tell you, mon petit chou darling, and what you will be extrémemeiit intéressé to know,’ and she underlined the French words.”

R. paused and rubbed his hands together. His tired face bore a look of devilish enjoyment of his own cunning.

“It was espionage made easy. Of course I didn’t care a damn about her, it was him I was after. Well, as soon as I’d got the goods on her I arrested her. I had enough evidence to convict a regiment of spies.”

R. put his hands in his pockets and his pale lips twisted to a smile that was almost a grimace.

“Holloway’s not a very cheerful place, you know.”

“I imagine no prison is,” remarked Ashenden.

“I left her to stew in her own juice for a week before I went to see her. She was in a very pretty state of nerves by then. The wardress told me she’d been in violent hysterics most of the time. I must say she looked like the devil.”

“Is she handsome?”

“You’ll see for yourself. She’s not my type. I daresay she’s better when she’s made up and that kind of thing. 1 talked to her like a Dutch uncle. I put the fear of God into her. I told her she’d get ten years. I think I scared her, I know I tried to. Of course she denied everything, but the proofs were there, I assured her she hadn’t got a chance. I spent three hours with her. She went all to pieces and at last she confessed everything. Then I told her that I’d let her go scot free if she’d get Chandra to come to France. She absolutely refused, she said she’d rather

die, she was very hysterical and tiresome, but I let her rave. I told her to think it over and said I’d see her in a day or two and we’d have another talk about it. In point of fact I left her for a week. She’d evidently had time to reflect, because when I came again she asked me quite calmly what it was exactly that I proposed. She’d been in jail a fortnight then and I expect she’d had about enough of it. I put it to her as plainly as I could and she accepted.”

“I don’t think I quite understand,” said Ashenden.

“Don’t you? I should have thought it was clear to the meanest intelligence. If she can get Chandra to cross the Swiss frontier and come into France she’s to go free, either to Spain or to South America, with her passage paid.”

“And how the devil is she to get Chandra to do that?” “He’s madly in love with her. He’s longing to see her. His letters are almost crazy. She’s written to him to say that she can’t get a visa to Holland (I told you she was to join him there when her tour was over), but she can get one for Switzerland. That’s a neutral country and he’s safe there. He jumped at the chance. They’ve arranged to meet at Lausanne.”

“Yes.” “When he reaches Lausanne he’ll get a letter from her to say that the French authorities won't let her cross the frontier and that she's going to Thonon, which is just on the other side of the lake from Lausanne, in France, and she’s going to ask him to come there.”

“What makes you think he will?”

R. paused for an instant. He looked at Ashenden with a pleasant expression.

“She must, make him if she doesn’t want to go to penal servitude for ten years.”

“I see.”

“She’s arriving from England this evening in custody and I should like you to take her down to Thonon by the night train.” “Me?” said Ashenden.

“Yes, I thought it the sort of job you could manage very well. Presumably you know more about human nature than most people. It’ll be a pleasant change for you to spend a week or two at Thonon. I believe it’s a pretty little place, fashionable too—in peace-time. You might take the baths there.”

“And what do you expect me to do when I get the lady down to Thonon?”

“I leave you a free hand. I’ve made a few notes that may be useful to you. I’ll read them to you, shall I?”

Ashenden listened attentively. R.’s plan was simple and explicit. Ashenden could not but feel unwilling admiration for the brain that had so neatly devised it.

Presently R. suggested that they should have luncheon and he asked Ashenden to take him to some place where they could see smart people. It amused Ashenden to see R. so sharp, sure of himself and alert in his office, seized as he walked into the restaurant with shyness. He talked a little too loud in order to show that he was at his ease and made himself somewhat unnecessarily at home. You saw in his manner the shabby and commonplace life he had led till the hazards of war raised him to a position of consequence. He was glad to be in that fashionable restaurant cheek by jowl with persons who bore great or distinguished names, but he felt like a school-boy in his first top-hat, and he quailed before the steely eye of the maître d'hôtel. His quick glance darted here and there and his sallow face beamed with a self-satisfaction of which he was slightly ashamed. Ashenden drew his attention to an ugly woman in black, with a lovely figure, wearing a long row of pearls.

“That is Madame de Brides. She is the mistress of the Grand Duke Theodore. She’s probably one of the most influential women in Europe, she’s certainly one of the cleverest.”

R.’s clever eyes rested on her and he flushed a little.

“By George, this is life,” he said.

Ashenden watched him curiously. Luxury is dangerous to people who have never known it and to whom its temptations are held out too suddenly. R., that shrewd, cynical man, was captivated by the vulgar glamour and the shoddy brilliance of the scene before him. Just as the advantage of culture is that it enables you to talk nonsense with distinction so the habit of luxury allows you to regard its frills and furbelows with a proper contumely.

But when they had eaten their luncheon and were drinking their coffee Ashenden, seeing that R. was mellowed by the good meal and his surroundings, went back to the subject that was in his thoughts.

“That Indian fellow must be a rather remarkable chap,” he said.

“He’s got brains of course.”

“One can’t help being impressed by a man who had the courage to take on almost single-handed the whole British power in India.”

“I wouldn’t get sentimental about him if I were you. He’s nothing but a dangerous criminal.”

“I don’t suppose he’d use bombs if he could command a few batteries and half a dozen battalions. He uses what weapons he can. You can hardly blame him for that. After all, he’s aiming at nothing for himself, is he? He’s aiming at freedom for his country. On the face of it it looks as though he were justified in his actions.”

But R. had no notion of what Ashenden was talking.

“That’s very far-fetched and morbid,” he said. “We can’t go into all that. Our job is to get him and when we’ve got him to shoot him.”

“Of course. He’s declared war and he must take his chance. I shall carry out your instructions, that’s what I’m here for. but I see no harm in realizing that there’s something to be admired and respected in him.”

R. was once more the cool and astute judge of his fellows.

“I’ve not yet made up my mind whether the best men for this kind of job are those who do it with passion or those who keep their heads. Some of them are filled with hatred for the people we’re up against and when we down them it gives them a sort of satisfaction like satisfying a personal grudge. Of course they’re very keen on their work. You’re different, aren’t you? You look at it like a game of chess and you don’t seem to have any feeling one way or the other. I can’t quite make it out. Of course for some sort of jobs it’s just what one wants.”

Ashenden did not answer. He called for the bill and walked back with R. to the hotel.

The train started at eight. When he had disposed of his bag Ashenden walked along the platform. He found the carriage in which Giulia Lazzari was, but she sat in a corner, looking away from the light, so that he could not see her face. She was in charge of two detectives who had taken her over from English police at Boulogne. One of them worked with Ashenden on the French side of the Lake Geneva and as Ashenden came up he nodded to him.

‘‘I’ve asked the lady if she will dine in the restaurant-car, but she prefers to have dinner in the carriage, so I’ve ordered a basket. Is that quite correct?”

“Quite,” said Ashenden.

“My companion and I will go into the diner in turn so that she will not remain alone.”

“That is very considerate of you. I will come along when we’ve started and have a chat with her.”

“She’s not disposed to be very talkative,” said the detective.

“One could hardly expect it,” replied Ashenden.

He walked on to get his ticket for the second service and then returned to his own carriage. Giulia Lazzari was just finishing her meal when he went back to her. From a glance at the basket he judged that she had not eaten with too poor an appetite. The detective who was guarding her opened the door when Ashenden appeared and at Ashenden’s suggestion left them alone.

Giulia Lazzari gave him a sullen look.

“I hope you’ve had what you wanted for dinner,” he said as he sat down in front of her.

She bowed slightly, but did not speak. He took out his case.

“Will you have a cigarette?”

She gave him a glance, seemed to hesitate, and then, still without a word, took one. He struck a match and, lighting it, looked at her. He was surprised. For some reason he had expected her to be fair, perhaps from some notion that an Oriental would be more likely to fall for a blonde; but she was almost swarthy. Her hair was hidden by a close-fitting hat, but her eyes were coal-black. She was far from young, she might have been thirty-five, and her skin was lined and sallow. She had at the moment no makeup on and she looked haggard. There was nothing beautiful about her but her magnificent eyes. She was big, and Ashenden thought she must be too big to dance gracefully; it might be that in Spanish costume she was a bold and flaunting figure, but there in the train, shabbily dressed, there was nothing to explain the Indian’s infatuation. She gave Ashenden a long, appraising stare. She wondered evidently what sort of man he was. She blew a cloud of smoke through her nostrils and gave it a glance, then looked back at Ashenden. He could see that her sullenness was only a mask, she was nervous and frightened. She spoke in French with an Italian accent.

“Who are you?”

“My name would mean nothing to you, madame. I am going to Thonon. I have taken a room for you at the Hotel de la Place. It is the only one open now. I think you will find it quite comfortable.”

“Ah, it is you the Colonel spoke to me of. You are my jailer.” “Only as a matter of form. I shall not intrude upon you.” “All the same you are my jailer.”

“I hope not for very long. I have in my pocket your passport with all the formalities completed to permit you to go to Spain.” She threw herself back into the corner of the carriage. White, with those great black eyes, in the poor light, her face was suddenly a mask of despair.

“It’s infamous. Oh, I think I could die happy if I could only kill that old Colonel. He has no heart. I’m so unhappy.”

“I am afraid you have got yourself into a very unfortunate situation. Did you not know that espionage was a dangerous game?”

“I never sold any of the secrets. I did no harm.”

“Surely only because you had no opportunity. I understand that you signed a full confession.”

Ashenden spoke to her as amiably as he could, a little as though he were talking to a sick person, and there was no harshness in his voice.

“Oh, yes, I made a fool of myself. I wrote the letter the

Colonel said I was to write. Why isn’t that enough? What is to happen to me if he does not answer? I cannot force him to come if he does not want to.”

“He has answered,” said Ashenden. “I have the answer with

She gave a gasp and her voice broke.

“Oh, show it to me, I beseech you to let me see it.”

“I have no objection to doing that. But you must return it to me.”

He took Chandra’s letter from his pocket and gave it to her. She snatched it from his hand. She devoured it with her eyes, there were eight pages of it, and as she read the tears streamed down her cheeks. Between her sobs she gave little exclamations of love, calling the writer by pet names French and Italian. This was the letter that Chandra had written in reply to hers telling him, on R.’s instructions, that she would meet him in Switzerland. He was mad with joy at the prospect. He told her in passionate phrases how long the time had seemed to him since they were parted, and how he had yearned for her, and now that he was to see her again so soon he did not know how he was going to bear his impatience. She finished it and let it drop to the floor.

“You can see he loves me, can’t you? There’s no doubt about that. I know something about it, believe me.”

“Do you really love him?” asked Ashenden.

“He’s the only man who’s ever been kind to me. It’s not very gay the life one leads in these music halls, all over Europe, never resting, and men—they are not much the men who haunt those places. At first I thought he was just like the rest of them.”

Ashenden picked up the letter and replaced it in his pocket-book.

“A telegram was sent in your name to the address in Holland to say that you would be at the Hotel Gibbons at Lausanne on the 14th.”

“That is to-morrow.”

“Yes.”

She threw up her head and her eyes flashed.

“Oh, it is an infamous thing that you are forcing me to do. It is shameful.”

“You are not obliged to do it,” said Ashenden.

“And if I don’t?” “I’m afraid you must take the consequences.”

“I can’t go to prison,” she cried out suddenly, “I can’t, I can’t; 1 have such a short time before me; he said ten years. Is it possible 1 could be sentenced to ten years?”

“If the Colonel told you so it is very possible.”

“Oh, I know him. That cruel face. He would have no mercy. And what should I be in ten years? Oh, no, no.”

At that moment the train stopped at a station and the detective waiting in the corridor tapped on the window. Ashenden opened the door and the man gave him a picture-postcard. It was a dull little view of Pontarlier, the frontier station between France and Switzerland, and showed a dusty place with a statue in the middle and a few plane trees. Ashenden handed her a pencil.

“Will you write this postcard to your lover. It will be posted at Pontarlier. Address it to the hotel at Lausanne.”

She gave him a glance, but without answering took it and wrote as he directed.

“Now on the other side write: ‘delayed at frontier but everything all right. Wait at Lausanne.’ Then add whatever you like, tendresses if you like.”

He took the postcard from her, read it to see that she had done as he directed and then reached for his hat.

“Well, I shall leave you now, I hope you will have a sleep. I will fetch you in the morning when we arrive at Thonon.” The second detective had now returned from his dinner and as Ashenden came out of the carriage the two men went in. Giulia Lazzari huddled back into her corner. Ashenden gave the postcard to an agent who was waiting to take it to Pontarlier and then made his way along the crowded train to his sleeping-car.

It was bright and sunny, though cold, next morning when they reached their destination. Ashenden, having given his bags to a porter, walked along the platform to where Giulia Lazzari and the two detectives were standing. Ashenden nodded to them.

“Well, good morning. You need not trouble to wait.”

They touched their hats, gave a word of farewell to the woman, and walked away.

“ Where are they going? ” she asked.

“Off. You will not be bothered with them any more-”

“Am I in your custody then?”

“You’re in nobody’s custody. I’m going to permit myself to take you to your hotel and then I shall leave you. You must try to get a good rest.”

Ashenden’s porter took her hand-luggage and she gave him the ticket for her trunk. They walked out of the station. A cab was waiting for them and Ashenden begged her to get in. It was a longish drive to the hotel and now and then Ashenden felt that she gave him a sidelong glance. She was perplexed. He sat without a word. When they reached the hotel the proprietor— it was a small hotel, prettily situated at the corner of a little promenade and it had a charming view—showed them the room that had been prepared for Madame Lazzari. Ashenden turned to him.

“That’ll do very nicely, I think. I shall come down in a minute.”

The proprietor bowed and withdrew.

“I shall do my best to see that you are comfortable, Madame,” said Ashenden. “You are here absolutely your own mistress and you may order pretty well anything you like. To the proprietor you are just a guest of the hotel like any other. You are absolutely free.”

“Free to go out?” she asked quickly.

“Of course.”

“With a policeman on either side of me, I suppose.”

“Not at all. You are as free in the hotel as though you were in your own house and you are free to go out and come in when you choose. I should like an assurance from you that you will not write any letters without my knowledge or attempt to leave Thonon without my permission.”

She gave Ashenden a long stare. She could not make it out at all. She looked as though she thought it a dream.

“I am in a position that forces me to give you any assurance you ask. I give you my word of honour that I will not write a letter without showing it to you or attempt to leave this place.”

“Thank you. Now I will leave you. I will do myself the pleasure of coming to see you to-morrow morning.”

Ashenden nodded and went out. He stopped for five minutes at the police-station to see that everything was in order and then took the cab up the hill to a little secluded house on the outskirts of the town at which on his periodical visits to this place he stayed. It was pleasant to have a bath and a shave and get into slippers. He felt lazy and spent the rest of the morning reading a novel.

Soon after dark, for even at Thonon, though it was in France, it was thought desirable to attract attention to Ashenden as little as possible, an agent from the police-station came to see him. His name was Felix. He was a little dark Frenchman with sharp eyes and an unshaven chin, dressed in a shabby grey suit and rather down at heel, so that he looked like a lawyer’s clerk out of work. Ashenden offered him a glass of wine and they sat down by the fire.

“Well, your lady lost no time,” he said. “Within a quarter of an hour of her arrival she was out of the hotel with a bundle of clothes and trinkets that she sold in a shop near the market. When the afternoon boat came in she went down to the quay and bought a ticket to Evian.”

Evian, it should be explained, was the next place along the lake in France and from there, crossing over, the boat went to Switzerland.

“Of course she hadn’t a passport, so permission to embark was denied her.”

“How did she explain that she had no passport?”

“She said she’d forgotten it. She said she had an appointment to see friends in Evian and tried to persuade the official in charge to let her go. She attempted to slip a hundred francs into his hand.”

“She must be a stupider woman than I thought,” said Ashenden.

But when next day he went about eleven in the morning to see her he made no reference to her attempt to escape. She had had time to arrange herself, and now, her hair elaborately done, her lips and cheeks painted, she looked less haggard than when he had first seen her.

“I’ve brought you some books,” said Ashenden. “I’m afraid the time hangs heavy on your hands.”

“What does that matter to you?”

“I have no wish that you should suffer anything that can be avoided. Anyhow I will leave them and you can read them or not as you choose.”

“If you only knew how I hated you.”

“It would doubtless make me very uncomfortable. But I really don’t know why you should. I am only doing what I have been ordered to do.” “What do you want of me now? I do not suppose you have come only to ask after my health.”

Ashenden smiled.

“I want you to write a letter to your lover telling him that owing to some irregularity in your passport the Swiss authorities would not let you cross the frontier, so you have come here where it is very nice and quiet, so quiet that one can hardly realize there is a war, and you propose that Chandra should join you.”

“Do you think he is a fool? He will refuse.”

“ Then you must do your best to persuade him.”

She looked at Ashenden a long time before she answered. He suspected that she was debating within herself whether by writing the letter and so seeming docile she could not gain time. “Well, dictate and I will write what you say.”

“I should prefer you to put it in your own words.”

“Give me half an hour and the letter shall be ready.”

“I will wait here,” said Ashenden.

“Why?”

“Becausc I prefer to.”

Her eyes flashed angrily, but controlling herself she said nothing. On the chest of drawers were writing materials. She sat down at the dressing-table and began to write. When she handed Ashenden the letter he saw that even through her rouge she was very pale. It was the letter of a person not much used to expressing herself by means of pen and ink, but it was well enough, and when towards the end, starting to say how much she loved the man, she had been carried away and wrote with all her heart, it had really a certain passion.

“Now add: The man who is bringing this is Swiss, you can trust him absolutely. I didn’t want the censor to see it.”

She hesitated an instant, but then wrote as he directed. “How do you spell, absolutely?”

“As you like. Now address an envelope and I will relieve you of my unwelcome presence.”

He gave the letter to the agent who was waiting to take it across the lake. Ashenden brought her the reply the same evening. She snatched it from his hands and for a moment pressed it to her heart. When she read it she uttered a little cry of relief. “He won’t come.”

The letter, in the Indian’s flowery, stilted English, expressed his bitter disappointment. He told her how intensely he had looked forward to seeing her and implored her to do everything in the world to smooth the difficulties that prevented her from crossing the frontier. He said that it was impossible for him to come, impossible, there was a price on his head, and it would be madness for him to think of risking it. He attempted to be jocular, she did not want her little fat lover to be shot, did she?

“He won’t come,” she repeated, “he won’t come.”

“You must write and tell him that there is no risk. You must say that if there were you would not dream of asking him. You must say that if he loves you he will not hesitate.”

“I won’t. I won’t.”

“Don’t be a fool. You can’t help yourself.”

She burst into a sudden flood of tears. She flung herself on the floor and seizing Ashenden’s knees implored him to have mercy on her.

“I will do anything in the world for you if you will let me g°”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Ashenden. “Do you think I want to become your lover? Come, come, you must be serious. You know the alternative.”

She raised herself to her feet and changing on a sudden to fury flung at Ashenden one foul name after another.

“I like you much better like that,” he said. “Now will you write or shall I send for the police?”

“He will not come. It is useless.”

“It is very much to your interest to make him come.”

“ What do you mean by that? Do you mean that if I do everything in my power and fail, that . .

She looked at Ashenden with wild eyes.

“Yes, it means either you or him.”

She staggered. She put her hand to her heart. Then without a word she reached for pen and paper. But the letter was not to Ashenden’s liking and he made her write it again. When she had finished she flung herself on the bed and burst once more into passionate weeping. Her grief was real, but there was something theatrical in the expression of it that prevented it from being peculiarly moving to Ashenden. He felt his relation to her as impersonal as a doctor’s in the presence of a pain that he cannot alleviate. He saw now why R. had given him this peculiar task; it needed a cool head and an emotion well under control.

He did not see her next day. The answer to the letter was not delivered to him till after dinner when it was brought to Ashenden’s little house by Felix.

“Well, what news have you?”

“Our friend is getting desperate,” smiled the Frenchman. “This afternoon she walked up to the station just as a train was about to start for Lyons. She was looking up and down uncertainly so I went to her and asked if there was anything I could do. I introduced myself as an agent of the Surety. If looks could kill I should not be standing here now.”

“Sit down, mon ami,” said Ashenden.

“Merci. She walked away, she evidently thought it was no use to try to get on the train, but I have something more interesting to tell you. She has offered a boatman on the lake a thousand francs to take her across to Lausanne.”

“What did he say to her?”

“He said he couldn’t risk it.”

“Yes?”

The little agent gave his shoulders a slight shrug and smiled. “She’s asked him to meet her on the road that leads to Evian at ten o’clock to-night so that they can talk of it again, and she’s given him to understand that she will not repulse too fiercely the advances of a lover. I have told him to do what he likes so long as he comes and tells me everything that is of importance.” “Are you sure you can trust him?” asked Ashenden.

“Oh, quite. He knows nothing, of course, but that she is under surveillance. You need have no fear about him. He is a good boy, I have known him all his life.”

Ashenden read Chandra’s letter. It was eager and passionate. It throbbed strangely with the painful yearning of his heart. Love? Yes, if Ashenden knew anything of it there was the real thing. He told her how he spent long long hours walking by the lakeside and looking towards the coast of France. How near they were and yet so desperately parted! He repeated again and again that he could not come, and begged her not to ask him, he would do everything in the world for her, but that he dared not do, and yet if she insisted how could he resist her? He besought her to have mercy on him. And then he broke into a long wail at the thought that he must go away without seeing her, he asked her if there were not some means by which she could slip over, he swore that if he could ever hold her in his arms again he would never let her go. Even the forced and elaborate language in which it was written could not dim the hot fire that burned the pages; it was the letter of a madman.

“When will you hear the result of her interview with the boatman?” asked Ashenden.

“I have arranged to meet him at the landing-stage between eleven and twelve.”

Ashenden looked at his watch.

“I will come with you.”

They walked down the hill and reaching the quay for shelter from the cold wind stood in the lea of the custom-house. At last they saw a man approaching and Felix stepped out of the shadow that hid them.

“Antoine.”

“Monsieur Félix? I have a letter for you; I promised to take it to Lausanne by the first boat tomorrow.”

Ashenden gave the man a brief glance, but did not ask what had passed between him and Giulia Lazzari. He took the letter and by the light of Felix’s electric torch read it. It was in faulty German.

“Oh no account come. Pay no attention to my letters. Danger. I love you. Sweetheart. Don't come.”

He put it in his pocket, gave the boatman fifty francs, and went home to bed. But the next day when he went to see Giulia Lazzari he found her door locked. He knocked for some time, there was no answer. lie called her.

“Madame Lazzari, you must open the door. I want to speak to you.”

“I am in bed. I am ill and can see no one.”

“I am sorry, but you must open the door. If you are ill I will send for a doctor.”

“No, go away. I will see no one.”

“If you do not open the door I shall send for a locksmith and have it broken open.”

There was a silence and then he heard the key turned in the lock. He went in. She was in a dressing-gown and her hair was dishevelled. She had evidently just got out of bed.

“I am at the end of my strength. I can do nothing more. You have only to look at me to see that I am ill. I have been sick all night.”

“I shall not keep you long. Would you like to see a doctor?” “What good can a doctor do me?”

He took out of his pocket the letter she had given the boatman and handed it to her.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked.

She gave a gasp at the sight of it and her sallow face went green.

“You gave me your word that you would neither attempt to escape nor write a letter without my knowledge.”

“Did you think I would keep my word?” she cried, her voice ringing with scorn.

“No. To tell you the truth it was not entirely for your convenience that you were placed in a comfortable hotel rather than in the local jail, but I think I should tell you that though you have your freedom to go in and out as you like you have no more chance of getting away from Thonon than if you were chained by the leg in a prison cell. It is silly to waste your time writing letters that will never be delivered.”

“ Cochon”

She flung the opprobrious word at him with all the violence that was in her.

“But you must sit down and write a letter that will be delivered.”

“Never. I will do nothing more. I will not write another word.”

“You came here on the understanding that you would do certain things.”

“I will not do them. It is finished.”

“You had better reflect a little.”

“Reflect! I have reflected. You can do what you like; I don’t care.”

“Very well, I will give you five minutes to change your mind.”

Ashenden took out his watch and looked at it. He sat down on the edge of the unmade bed.

“Oh, it has got on my nerves, this hotel. Why did you not put me in the prison? Why, why? Everywhere I went I felt that spies were on my heels. It is infamous what you are making me do. Infamous! What is my crime? I ask you, what have I done? Am I not a woman? It is infamous what you are asking me to do. Infamous.”

She spoke in a high shrill voice. She went on and on. At last the five minutes were up. Ashenden had not said a word. He rose.

“Yes, go, go,” she shrieked at him.

She flung foul names at him.

“I shall come back,” said Ashenden.

He took the key out of the door as he went out of the room and locked it behind him. Going downstairs he hurriedly scribbled a note, called the boots and dispatched him with it to the police-station. Then he went up again. Giulia Lazzari had thrown herself on her bed and turned her face to the wall. Her body was shaken with hysterical sobs. She gave no sign that she heard him come in. Ashenden sat down on the chair in front of the dressing-table and looked idly at the odds and ends that littered it. The toilet things were cheap and tawdry and none too clean. There were little shabby pots of rouge and cold-: cream and little bottles of black for the eyebrows and eyelashes. The hairpins were horrid and greasy. The room was untidy and the air was heavy with the smell of cheap scent. Ashenden thought of the hundreds of rooms she must have occupied in third-rate hotels in the course of her wandering life from provincial town to provincial town in one country after another. He wondered what had been her origins. She was a coarse and vulgar woman, but what had she been when young? She was not the type he would have expected to adopt that career, for she seemed to have no advantages that could help her, and he asked himself whether she came of a family of entertainers (there are all over the world families in which for generations the members have become dancers or acrobats or comic singers) or whether she had fallen into the life accidentally through some lover in the business who had for a time made her his partner. And what men must she have known in all these years, the comrades of the shows she was in, the agents and managers who looked upon it as a perquisite of their position that they should enjoy her favours, the merchants or well-to-do tradesmen, the young sparks of the various towns she played in, who were attracted for the moment by the glamour of the dancer or the blatant sensuality of the woman! To her they were the paying customers and she accepted them indifferently as the recognized and admitted supplement to her miserable salary, but to them perhaps she was romance. In her bought arms they caught sight for a moment of the brilliant world of the capitals, and ever so distantly and however shoddily of the adventure and the glamour of a more spacious life.

There was a sudden knock at the door and Ashenden immediately cried out:

“Entrez.”

Giulia Lazzari sprang up in bed to a sitting posture.

“Who is it?” she called.

She gave a gasp as she saw the two detectives who had brought her from Boulogne and handed her over to Ashenden at Thonon.

“You! What do you want?” she shrieked.

“Allons, levez vous,” said one of them, and his voice had a sharp abruptness that suggested that he would put up with no nonsense.

“I’m afraid you must get up, Madame Lazzari,” said Ashenden. “I am delivering you once more to the care of these gentlemen.”

“How can I get up! I’m ill, I tell you. I cannot stand. Do you want to kill me?”

“If you won’t dress yourself, we shall have to dress you, and I’m afraid we shouldn’t do it very cleverly. Come, come, it’s no good making a scene.”

“Where are you going to take me?”

“They’re going to take you back to England.”

One of the detectives took hold of her arm.

“Don’t touch me, don’t come near me,” she screamed furiously.

“Let her be,” said Ashenden. “I’m sure she’ll see the necessity of making as little trouble as possible.”

“I’ll dress myself.”

Ashenden watched her as she took off her dressing-gown and slipped a dress over her head. She forced her feet into shoes obviously too small for her. She arranged her hair. Every now and then she gave the detectives a hurried, sullen glance. Ashenden wondered if she would have the nerve to go through with it. R. would call him a damned fool, but he almost wished she would. She went up to the dressing-table and Ashenden stood up in order to let her sit down. She greased her face quickly and then rubbed off the grease with a dirty towel, she powdered herself and made up her eyes. But her hand shook. The three men watched her in silence. She rubbed the rouge on her cheeks and painted her mouth. Then she crammed a hat down on her head. Ashenden made a gesture to the first detective and he took a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and advanced towards her.

At the sight of them she started back violently and flung her arms wide.

“Non, non, non. Je ne veux pas. No, not them. No. No.” “Come, ma fille, don’t be silly,” said the detective roughly. As though for protection (very much to his surprise) she flung her arms round Ashenden.

“Don’t let them take me, have mercy on me, I can’t, I can’t.” Ashenden extricated himself as best he could.

“I can do nothing more for you.”

The detective seized her wrists and was about to affix the handcuffs when with a great cry she threw herself down on the floor.

“I will do what you wish. I will do everything.”

On a sign from Ashenden the detectives left the room. He waited for a little till she had regained a certain calm. She was lying on the floor, sobbing passionately. He raised her to her feet and made her sit down.

“What do you want me to do?” she gasped.

“I want you to write another letter to Chandra.”

“My head is in a whirl. I could not put two phrases together. You must give me time.”

But Ashenden felt that it was better to get her to write a letter while she was under the effect of her terror. He did not want to give her time to collect herself.

“I will dictate the letter to you. All you have to do is to write exactly what I tell you.”

She gave a deep sigh, but took the pen and the paper and sat down before them at the dressing-table.

“If I do this and . . . and you succeed, how do I know that I shall be allowed to go free?”

“The Colonel promised that you should. You must take my word for it that 1 shall carry out his instructions.”

“I should look a fool if I betrayed my friend and then went to prison for ten years.”

“I’ll tell you your best guarantee of our good faith. Except by reason of Chandra you are not of the smallest importance to us. Why should we put ourselves to the bother and expense of keeping you in prison when you can do us no harm?”

She reflected for an instant. She was composed now. It was as though, having exhausted her emotion, she had become on a sudden a sensible and practical woman.

“Tell me what you want me to write.”

Ashenden hesitated. He thought he could put the letter more or less in the way she would naturally have put it, but he had to

give it consideration. It must be neither fluent nor literary. He knew that in moments of emotion people are inclined to be melodramatic and stilted. In a book or on the stage this always rings false and the author has to make his people speak more simply and with less emphasis than in fact they do. It was a serious moment, but Ashenden felt that there were in it elements of the comic.

“I didn’t know I loved a coward,” he started. “If you loved me you couldn’t hesitate when I ask you to come.... Underline couldn't twice.” He went on. “When I promise you there is no danger. If you don’t love me, you are right not to come. Don’t come. Go back to Berlin where you are in safety. I am sick of it. I am alone here. I have made myself ill by waiting for you and every day I have said he is coming. If you loved me you would not hesitate so much. It is quite clear to me that you do not love me. I am sick and tired of you. I have no money. This hotel is impossible. There is nothing for me to stay for. I can get an engagement in Paris. I have a friend there who has made me serious propositions. I have wasted long enough over you and look what I have got from it. It is finished. Good-bye. You will never find a woman who will love you as I have loved you. I cannot afford to refuse the proposition of my friend, so I have telegraphed to him and as soon as I shall receive his answer I go to Paris. I do not blame you because you do not love me, that is not your fault, but you must see that I should be a stupid to go on wasting my life. One is not young for ever. Good-bye. Giulia.”

When Ashenden read over the letter he was not altogether satisfied. But it was the best he could do. It had an air of verisimilitude which the words lacked because, knowing little English, she had written phonetically, the spelling was atrocious and the handwriting like a child’s; she had crossed out words and written them over again. Some of the phrases he had put in French. Once or twice tears had fallen on the pages and blurred the ink.

“I leave you now,” said Ashenden. “It may be that when next you see me I shall be able to tell you that you are free to go where you choose. Where do you want to go?”

“Spain.”

“Very well, I will have everything prepared.”

She shrugged her shoulders. He left her.

There was nothing now for Ashenden to do but wait. He sent a messenger to Lausanne in the afternoon, and next morning went down to the quay to meet the boat. There was a waiting-room next to the ticket-office and here he told the detectives to hold themselves in readiness. When a boat arrived the passengers advanced along the pier in line and their passports i were examined before they were allowed to go ashore. If Chandra came and showed his passport, and it was very likely that he was travelling with a false one, issued probably by a neutral nation, he was to be asked to wait and Ashenden was to identify him. Then he would be arrested. It was with some excitement that Ashenden watched the boat come in and the little group of people gathered at the gangway. He scanned them closely but saw no one who looked in the least like an Indian. Chandra had not come. Ashenden did not know what to do. He had played his last card. There were not more than half a dozen passengers for Thonon and when they had been examined and gone their way he strolled slowly along the pier.

“Well, it’s no go,” he said to Felix who had been examining the passports. “The gentleman I expected hasn’t turned up.” “I have a letter for you.”

He handed Ashenden an envelope addressed to Madame Lazzari on which he immediately recognized the spidery handwriting of Chandra Lai. At that moment the steamer from Geneva which was going to Lausanne and the end of the lake hove in sight. It arrived at Thonon every morning twenty minutes after the steamer going in the opposite direction had left. Ashenden had an inspiration.

“Where is the man who brought it?”

“He’s in the ticket-office.”

“Give him the letter and tell him to return to the person who gave it to him. He is to say that he took it to the lady and she sent it back. If the person asks him to take another letter he is to say that it is not much good as she is packing her trunk and leaving Thonon.”

He saw the letter handed over and the instructions given and then walked back to his little house in the country.

The next boat on which Chandra could possibly come arrived about five and having at that hour an important engagement with an agent working in Germany he warned Felix that he might be a few minutes late. But if Chandra came he could easily be detained; there was no great hurry since the train in which he was to be taken to Paris did not start till shortly after

eight. When Ashenden had finished his business he strolled leisurely down to the lake. It was light still and from the top of the hill he saw the steamer pulling out. It was an anxious moment and instinctively he quickened his steps. Suddenly he saw someone running towards him and recognized the man who had taken the letter.

“Quick, quick,” he cried. “He’s there.”

Ashenden’s heart gave a great thud against his chest.

“At last.”

He began to run too and as they ran the man, panting, told him how he had taken back the unopened letter. When he put it in the Indian’s hand he turned frightfully pale (“I should never have thought an Indian could turn that colour,” he said) and turned it over and over in his hand as though he could not understand what his own letter was doing there. Tears sprang to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. (“It was grotesque, he’s fat, you know.”) He said something in a language the man did not understand and then in French asked him when the boat went to Thonon. When he got on board he looked about, but did not see him, then he caught sight of him, huddled up in an ulster with his hat drawn down over his eyes, standing alone in the bows. During the crossing he kept his eyes fixed on Thonon.

“Where is he now?” asked Ashenden.

“I got off first and Monsieur Felix told me to come for you.”

“I suppose they’re holding him in the waiting-room.”

Ashenden was out of breath when they reached the pier. He burst into the waiting-room. A group of men, talking at the top of their voices and gesticulating wildly, were clustered round a man lying on the ground.

“What’s happened?” he cried.

“Look,” said Monsieur Felix.

Chandra Lai lay there, his eyes wide open and a thin line of foam on his lips, dead. His body was horribly contorted.

“He’s killed himself. We’ve sent for the doctor. He was too quick for us.”

A sudden thrill of horror passed through Ashenden.

When the Indian landed Felix recognized from the description that he was the man they wanted. There were only four passengers. He was the last. Felix took an exaggerated time to examine the passports of the first three, and then took the Indian’s. It was a Spanish one and it was all in order. Felix asked the regulation questions and noted them on the official sheet. Then he looked at him pleasantly and said:

“Just come into the waiting-room for a moment. There are one or two formalities to fulfil.”

“Is my passport not in order?” the Indian asked.

“Perfectly.”

Chandra hesitated, but then followed the official to the door of the waiting-room. Felix opened it and stood aside.

“Entrez.”

Chandra went in and the two detectives stood up. He must have suspected at once that they were police-officers and realized that he had fallen into a trap.

“Sit down,” said Felix. “I have one or two questions to put to you.”

“It is hot in here,” he said, and in point of fact they had a little stove there that kept the place like an oven. “I will take off my coat if you permit.”

“Certainly,” said Felix graciously.

He took off his coat, apparently with some effort, and he turned to put it on a chair, and then before they realized what had happened they were startled to see him stagger and fall heavily to the ground. While biking off his coat Chandra had managed to swallow the contents of a bottle that was still clasped in his hand. Ashenden put his nose to it. There was a very distinct odour of almonds.

For a little while they looked at the man who lay on the floor. Felix was apologetic.

“Will they be very angry?” he asked nervously.

“I don’t see that it was your fault,” said Ashenden. “Anyhow he can do no more harm. For my part I am just as glad he killed himself. The notion of his being executed did not make me very comfortable.”

In a few minutes the doctor arrived and pronounced life extinct.

“Prussic acid,” he said to Ashenden.

Ashenden nodded.

“I will go and see Madame Lazzari,” he said. “If she wants to stay a day or two longer I shall let her. But if she wants to go to-night of course she can. Will you give the agents at the station instructions to let her pass?”

“I shall be at the station myself,” said Felix.

Ashenden once more climbed the hill. It was night now, a

cold, bright night with an unclouded sky and the sight of the new moon, a white shining thread, made him turn three times the money in his pocket. When he entered the hotel he was seized on a sudden with distaste for its cold banality. It smelt of cabbage and boiled mutton. On the walls of the hall were coloured posters of railway companies advertising Grenoble, Carcassonne and the bathing places of Normandy. He went upstairs and after a brief knock opened the door of Giulia Laz-zari’s room. She was sitting in front of her dressing-table, looking at herself in the glass, just idly or despairingly, apparently doing nothing, and it was in this that she saw Ashenden as he came in. Her face changed suddenly as she caught sight of his and she sprang up so vehemently that the chair fell over.

“What is it? Why are you so white?” she cried.

She turned round and stared at him and her features were gradually twisted to a look of horror.

“ Il est pris,” she gasped.

“7/ est mort,” said Ashenden.

“Dead! He took the poison. He had the time for that. He’s escaped you after all.”

“What do you mean? How did you know about the poison?”

“He always carried it with him. He said that the English should never take him alive.”

Ashenden reflected for an instant. She had kept that secret well. He supposed the possibility of such a thing should have occurred to him. How was he to anticipate these melodramatic devices?

“Well, now you are free. You can go wherever you like and no obstacle shall be put in your way. Here are your ticket and your passport and here is the money that was in your possession when you were arrested. Do you wish to see Chandra?”

She started.

“No, no.”

“There is no need. I thought you might care to.”

She did not weep. Ashenden supposed that she had exhausted all her emotion. She seemed apathetic.

“A telegram will be sent to-night to the Spanish frontier to instruct the authorities to put no difficulties in your way. If you will take my advice you will get out of France as soon as you can.”

She said nothing, and since Ashenden had no more to say he made ready to go.

“I am sorry that I have had to show myself so hard to you. I am glad to think that now the worst of your troubles are over and I hope that time will assuage the grief that I know you must feel for the death of your friend.”

Ashenden gave her a little bow and turned to the door. But she stopped him.

“One little moment,” she said. “There is one thing I should like to ask. I think you have some heart.”

“Whatever I can do for you, you may be sure I will.” “What are they going to do with his things?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

Then she said something that confounded Ashenden. It was the last thing he expected.

“He had a wrist-watch that I gave him last Christmas. It cost twelve pounds. Can I have it back? ”

MR HARRINGTON’S WASHING

WHEN Ashenden went on deck and saw before him a low-lying coast and a white town he felt a pleasant flutter of excitement. It was early and the sun had not long risen, but the sea was glassy and the sky was blue; it was warm already and one knew that the day would be sweltering. Vladivostok. It really gave one the sensation of being at the end of the world. It was a long journey that Ashenden had made from New York to San Francisco, across the Pacific in a Japanese boat to Yokohama, then from Tsuruki in a Russian boat, he the only Englishman on board, up the Sea ofJapan. From Vladivostok he was to take the Trans-Siberian to Petrograd. It was the most important mission that he had ever had and he was pleased with the sense of responsibility that it gave him. He had no one to give him orders, unlimited funds (he carried in a belt next to his skin bills of exchange for a sum so enormous that he was staggered when he thought of them), and though he had been set to do something that was beyond human possibility he did not know this and was prepared to set about his task with confidence. He believed in his own astuteness. Though he had both esteem and admiration for the sensibility of the human race, he had little respect for their intelligence: man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than to learn the multiplication table.

Ashenden did not much look forward to ten days on a Russian train, and in Yokohama he had heard rumours that in one or two places bridges had been blown up and the line cut. He was told that the soldiers, completely out of hand, would rob him of everything he possessed and turn him out on the steppe to shift for himself. It was a cheerful prospect. But the train was certainly starting and whatever happened later (and Ashenden had always a feeling that things never turned out as badly as you expected) he was determined to get a place on it. His intention on landing was to go at once to the British Consulate and find out what arrangements had been made for him;

but as they neared the shore and he was able to discern the untidy and bedraggled town he felt not a little forlorn. He knew but a few words of Russian. The only man on the ship who spoke English was the purser and though he promised Ashenden to do anything he could to help him, Ashenden had the impression that he must not too greatly count upon him. It was a relief then, when they docked, to have a young man, small and with a mop of untidy hair, obviously a Jew, come up to him and ask if his name was Ashenden.

“Mine is Benedict. I’m the interpreter at the British Consulate. I’ve been told to look after you. We’ve got a place on the train tonight.”

Ashenden’s spirits went up. They landed. The little Jew looked after his luggage and had his passport examined and then, getting into a car that waited for them, they drove off to the Consulate.

“I’ve had instructions to offer you every facility,” said the Consul, “and you’ve only got to tell me what you want. I’ve fixed you up all right on the train, but God knows if you’ll ever get to Petrograd. Oh, by the way, I’ve got a travelling companion for you. He’s a man called Harrington, an American, and he’s going to Petrograd for a firm in Philadelphia. He’s trying to fix up some deal with the Provisional Government.”

“What’s he like?” asked Ashenden.

“Oh, he’s all right. I wanted him to come with the American Consul to luncheon, but they’ve gone for an excursion in the country. You must get to the station a couple of hours before the train starts. There’s always an awful scrimmage and if you’re not there in good time someone will pinch your seat.”

The train started at midnight and Ashenden dined with Benedict at the station restaurant, which was, it appeared, the only place in that slatternly town where you could get a decent meal. It was crowded. The service was intolerably slow. Then they went on to the platform, where, though they had still two hours to spare, there was already a seething mob. Whole families, sitting on piles of luggage, seemed to be camped there. People rushed to and fro, or stood in little groups violently arguing. Women screamed. Others were silently weeping. Here two men were engaged in a fierce quarrel. It was a scene of indescribable confusion. The light in the station was wan and cold and the white faces of all those people were like the white faces of the dead waiting, patient or anxious, distraught or penitent, for the judgement of the last day. The train was made up and most of the carriages were already filled to overflowing. When at last Benedict found that in which Ashenden had his place a man sprang out of it excitedly.

“Come in and sit down,” he said. “I’ve had the greatest difficulty in keeping your seat. A fellow wanted to come in here with a wife and two children. My Consul has just gone off with him to see the stationmaster.”

“This is Mr Harrington,” said Benedict.

Ashenden stepped into the carriage. It had two berths in it. The porter stowed his luggage away. He shook hands with his travelling companion.

Mr John Quincy Harrington was a very thin man of somewhat less than middle height. He had a yellow, bony face, with large, pale-blue eyes, and when he took off his hat to wipe his brow wet from perturbation he had endured he showed a large, bald skull; it was very bony and the ridges and protuberances stood out disconcertingly. He wore a bowler-hat, a black coat and waistcoat, and a pair of striped trousers; a very high white collar, and a neat, unobtrusive tie. Ashenden did not know precisely how you should dress in order to take a ten days’ journey across Siberia, but he could not but think that Mr Harrington’s costume was eccentric. He spoke with precision in a high-pitched voice and in an accent that Ashenden recognized as that of New England.

In a minute the stationmaster came accompanied by a bearded Russian, suffering evidently from profound emotion, and followed by a lady holding two children by the hand. The Russian, tears running down his face, was talking with quivering lips to the stationmaster, and his wife between her sobs was apparently telling him the story of her life. When they arrived at the carriage the altercation became more violent and Benedict joined in with his fluent Russian. Mr Harrington did not know a word of the language, but being obviously of an excitable turn broke in and explained in voluble English that these seats had been booked by the Consuls of Great Britain and the United States respectively, and though he didn’t know about the King of England, he could tell them straight and they could take it from him that the President of the United States would never permit an American citizen to be done out of a seat on the train that he had duly paid for. He would yield to force, but to nothing else, and if they touched him he would register a complaint with the Consul at once. He said all this and a great deal more to the stationmaster, who of course had no notion what he was talking about, but with much emphasis and a good deal of gesticulation made him in reply a passionate speech. This roused Mr Harrington to the utmost pitch of indignation, for shaking his fist in the stationmaster’s face, his own pale with fury, he cried out:

“Tell him I don’t understand a word he says and I don’t want to understand. If the Russians want us to look upon them as a civilized people, why don’t they talk a civilized language? Tell him that I am Mr John Quincy Harrington and I’m travelling on behalf of Messrs Crew and Adams of Philadelphia with a special letter of introduction to Mr Kerensky and if I’m not left in peaceful possession of this carriage Mr Crewe will take the matter up with the Administration in Washington.”

Mr Harrington’s manner was so truculent and his gestures so menacing that the stationmaster, throwing up the sponge, turned on his heel without another word and walked moodily away. He was followed by the bearded Russian and his wife arguing heatedly with him and the two apathetic children. Mr Harrington jumped back into the carriage.

“I’m terribly sorry to have to refuse to give up my seat to a lady with two children,” he said. “No one knows better than I the respect due to a woman and a mother, but I’ve got to get to Petrograd by this train if I don’t want to lose a very important order and I’m not going to spend ten days in a corridor for all the mothers in Russia.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Ashenden.

“I am a married man and I have two children myself. I know that travelling with your family is a difficult matter, but there’s nothing that I know to prevent you from staying at home.”

When you are shut up with a man for ten days in a railway carriage you can hardly fail to learn most of what there is to know about him, and for ten days (for eleven to be exact) Ashenden spent twenty-four hours a day with Mr Harrington. It is true that they went into the dining-room three times a day for their meals, but they sat opposite to one another; it is true that the train stopped for an hour morning and afternoon so that they were able to have a tramp up and down the platform, but they walked side by side. Ashenden made acquaintance with some of his fellow-travellers and sometimes they came into the compartment to have a chat, but if they only spoke French or German Mr Harrington would watch them with acidulous disapproval and if they spoke English he would never let them get a word in. For Mr Harrington was a talker. He talked as though it were a natural function of the human being, automatically, as men breathe or digest their food; he talked not because he had something to say, but because he could not help himself, in a high-pitched, nasal voice, without inflexion, at one dead level of tone. He talked with precision, using a copious vocabulary and forming his sentences with deliberation; he never used a short word when a longer one would do; he never paused. He went on and on. It was not a torrent, for there was nothing impetuous about it, it was like a stream of lava pouring irresistibly down the side of a volcano. It flowed with a quiet and steady force that overwhelmed everything that was in its path.

Ashenden thought he had never known as much about anyone as he knew about Mr Harrington, and not only about him, with all his opinions, habits, and circumstances, but about his wife and his wife’s family, his children and their schoolfellows, his employers and the alliances they had made for three or four generations with the best families in Philadelphia. His own family had come from Devonshire early in the eighteenth century and Mr Harrington had been to the village where the graves of his forebears were still to be seen in the churchyard. He was proud of his English ancestry, but proud too of his American birth, though to him America was a little strip of land along the Atlantic coast and Americans were a small number of persons of English or Dutch origin whose blood had never been sullied by foreign admixture. He looked upon the Germans, Swedes, Irish, and the inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe who for the last hundred years have descended upon the United States, as interlopers. He turned his attention away from them as a maiden lady who lived in a secluded manor might avert her eyes from the factory chimneys that had trespassed upon her retirement.

When Ashenden mentioned a man of vast wealth who owned some of the finest pictures in America Mr Harrington said:

“I’ve never met him. My great-aunt Maria Penn Warrington always said his grandmother was a very good cook. My great-aunt Maria was terribly sorry when she left her to get married. She said she never knew anyone who could make an apple pancake as she could.”

Mr Harrington was devoted to his wife, and he told Ashenden at unbelievable length how cultivated and what a perfect mother she was. She had delicate health and had undergone a great number of operations all of which he described in detail. He had had two operations himself, one on his tonsils and one to remove his appendix and he took Ashenden day by day through his experiences. All his friends had had operations and his knowledge of surgery was encyclopedic. He had two sons, both at school, and he was seriously considering whether he would not be well-advised to have them operated on. It was curious that one of them should have enlarged tonsils, and he was not at all happy about the appendix of the other. They were more devoted to one another than he had ever seen two brothers be, and a very good friend of his, the brightest surgeon in Philadelphia, had offered to operate on them both together so that they should not be separated. He showed Ashenden photographs of the boys and their mother. This journey of his to Russia was the first time in their lives that he had been separated from them, and every morning he wrote a long letter to his wife telling her everything that had happened and a good deal of what he had said during the day. Ashenden watched him cover sheet after sheet of paper with his neat, legible, and precise handwriting.

Mr Harrington had read all the books on conversation and knew its technique to the last detail. He had a little book in which he noted down the stories he heard and he told Ashenden that when he was going out to dinner he always looked up half a dozen so that he should not be at a loss. They were marked with a G if they could be told in general society and with an M (for men) if they were more fit for rough masculine ears. He was a specialist in that peculiar form of anecdote that consists in narrating a long serious incident, piling detail upon detail, till a comic end is reached. He spared you nothing, and Ashenden, foreseeing the point long before it arrived, would clench his hands and knit his brows in the strenuous effort not to betray his impatience and at last force from his unwilling mouth a grim and hollow laugh. If someone came into the compartment in the middle Mr Harrington would greet him with cordiality.

“Come right in and sit down. I was just telling my friend a story. You must listen to it, it’s one of the funniest things you ever heard.”

Then he would begin again from the very beginning and repeat it word for word, without altering a single apt epithet, till he reached the humorous end. Ashenden suggested once that they should see whether they could find two people on the train who played cards so that they might while away the time with a game of bridge, but Mr Harrington said he never touched cards and when Ashenden in desperation began to play patience he pulled a wry face.

“It beats me how an intelligent man can waste his time card-playing, and of all the unintellectual pursuits I have ever seen it seems to me that solitaire is the worst. It kills conversation. Man is a social animal and he exercises the highest part of his nature when he takes part in social intercourse.”

“There is a certain elegance in wasting time,” said Ashenden. “Any fool can waste money, but when you waste time you waste what is priceless. Besides,” he added with bitterness, “you can still talk.”

“How can I talk when your attention is taken up by whether you are going to get a black seven to put on a red eight? Conversation calls forth the highest powers of the intellect and if you have made a study of it you have the right to expect that the person you’re talking to will give you the fullest attention he is capable of.”

He did not say this acrimoniously, but with the good-humoured patience of a man who has been much tried. He was just stating a plain fact and Ashenden could take it or leave it. It was the claim of the artist to have his work taken seriously.

Mr Harrington was a diligent reader. He read pencil in hand, underlining passages that attracted his attention, and on the margin making in his neat writing comments on what he read. This he was fond of discussing and when Ashenden himself was reading and felt on a sudden that Mr Harrington, book in one hand and pencil in the other, was looking at him with his large pale eyes he began to have violent palpitations of the heart. He dared not look up, he dared not even turn the page, for he knew that Mr Harrington would regard this as ample excuse to break into a discourse, but remained with his eyes fixed desperately on a single word, like a chicken with its beak to a chalk line, and only ventured to breathe when he realized that Mr Harrington, having given up the attempt, had resumed his reading. He was then engaged on a History of the American Constitution in two volumes, and for recreation was perusing a stout volume that purported to contain all the great speeches of the world. For Mr Harrington was an after-dinner speaker and had read all the best books on speaking in public. He knew exactly how to get on good terms with his audience, just where to put in the serious words that touched their hearts, how to catch their attention by a few apt stories, and finally with what degree of eloquence, suiting the occasion, to deliver his peroration.

Mr Harrington was very fond of reading aloud. Ashenden had had frequent occasion to observe the distressing propensity of Americans for this pastime. In hotel drawing-rooms at night after dinner he had often seen the father of a family seated in a retired corner and surrounded by his wife, his two sons, and his daughter, reading to them. On ships crossing the Atlantic he had sometimes watched with awe the tall, spare gentleman of commanding aspect who sat in the centre of fifteen ladies no longer in their first youth and in a resonant voice read to them the history of Art. Walking up and down the promenade deck he had passed honeymooning couples lying on deck-chairs and caught the unhurried tones of the bride as she read to her young husband the pages of a popular novel. It had always seemed to him a curious way of showing affection. He had had friends who had offered to read to him and he had known women who had said they loved being read to, but he had always politely refused the invitation and firmly ignored the hint. He liked neither reading aloud nor being read aloud to. In his heart he thought the national predilection for this form of entertainment the only flaw in the perfection of the American character. But the immortal gods love a good laugh at the expense of human beings and now delivered him, bound and helpless, to the knife of the high priest. Mr Harrington flattered himself that he was a very good reader and he explained to Ashenden the theory and practice of the art. Ashenden learned that there were two schools, the dramatic and the natural: in the first you imitated the voices of those who spoke (if you were reading a novel), and when the heroine wailed you wailed and when emotion choked her you choked too; but in the other you read as impassively as though you were reading the price-list of a mail-order house in Chicago. This was the school Mr Harrington belonged to. In the seventeen years of his married life he had read aloud to his wife, and to his sons as soon as they were old enough to appreciate them, the novels of Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Thackeray, George Eliot, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and W. D. Howells. Ashenden came to the conclusion that it was second nature with Mr Harrington to read aloud, and to prevent him from doing so made him as uneasy as cutting off his tobacco made the confirmed smoker. He would take you unawares.

“Listen to this,” he would say, “you must listen to this,” as though he were suddenly struck by the excellence of a maxim or the neatness of a phrase. “Now just tell me if you don’t think this is remarkably well put. It’s only three lines.”

He read them and Ashenden was willing to give him a moment’s attention, but having finished them, without pausing for a moment to take breath, he went on. He went right on and on. In his measured high-pitched voice, without emphasis or expression, he read page after page. Ashenden fidgeted, crossed and uncrossed his legs, lit cigarettes and smoked them, sat first in one position, then in another. Mr Harrington went on and on. The train went leisurely through the interminable steppes of Siberia. They passed villages and crossed rivers. Mr Harrington went on and on. When he finished a great speech by Edmund Burke he put down the book in triumph.

“Now that in my opinion is one of the finest orations in the English language.

It is certainly a part of our common heritage that we can look upon with genuine pride.”

“Doesn’t it seem to you a little ominous that the people to whom Edmund Burke made that speech are all dead?” asked Ashenden gloomily.

Mr Harrington was about to reply that this was hardly to be wondered at since the speech was made in the eighteenth century, when it dawned upon him that Ashenden (bearing up wonderfully under affliction as any unprejudiced person could not fail to admit) was making a joke. He slapped his knee and laughed heartily.

“Gee, that’s a good one,” he said. “I’ll write that down in my little book. I see exactly how I can bring it in one time when I have to speak at our luncheon club.”

Mr Harrington was a highbrow; but that appellation, invented by the vulgar as a term of abuse, he had accepted like the instrument of a saint’s martyrdom, the gridiron of Saint Laurence for instance or the wheel of Saint Catherine, as an honorific title. He gloried in it.

“Emerson was a highbrow,” he said. “Longfellow was a highbrow. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a highbrow. James Russell Lowell was a highbrow.”

Mr Harrington’s study of American literature had taken him no farther down the years than the period during which those eminent, but not precisely thrilling, authors flourished.

Mr Harrington was a bore. He exasperated Ashenden, and enraged him; he got on his nerves, and drove him to frenzy. But Ashenden did not dislike him. His self-satisfaction was enormous but so ingenuous that you could not resent it; his conceit was so childlike that you could only smile at it. He was so well-meaning, so thoughtful, so deferential, so polite that though Ashenden would willingly have killed him he could not but own that in that short while he had conceived for Mr Harrington something very like affection. His manners were perfect, formal, a trifle elaborate perhaps (there is no harm in that, for good manners are the product of an artificial state of society and so can bear a touch of the powdered wig and the lace ruffle), but though natural to his good breeding they gained a pleasant significance from his good heart. He was ready to do anyone a kindness and seemed to find nothing too much trouble if he could thereby oblige his fellow-man. He was eminently serviable. And it may be that this is a word for which there is no exact translation because the charming quality it denotes is not very common among our practical people. When Ashenden was ill for a couple of days Mr Harrington nursed him with devotion. Ashenden was embarrassed by the care he took of him and though racked with pain could not help laughing at the fussy attention with which Mr Harrington took his temperature, from his neatly packed valise extracted a whole regiment of tabloids and firmly doctored him; and he was touched by the trouble he gave himself to get from the dining-car the things that he thought Ashenden could eat. He did everything in the world for him but stop talking.

It was only when he was dressing that Mr Harrington was silent, for then his maidenly mind was singly occupied with the problem of changing his clothes before Ashenden without indelicacy. He was extremely modest. He changed his linen every day, neatly taking it out of his suitcase and neatly putting back what was soiled; but he performed miracles of dexterity in order during the process not to show an inch of bare skin. After a day or two Ashenden gave up the struggle to keep neat and clean in that dirty train, with one lavatory for the whole carriage, and soon was as grubby as the rest of the passengers; but Mr Harrington refused to yield to the difficulties. He performed his toilet with deliberation notwithstanding the impatient persons who rattled the doorhandle, and returned from the lavatory every morning washed, shining, and smelling of soap. Once dressed, in his black coat, striped trousers, and well-polished shoes, he looked as spruce as though he had just stepped out of his tidy little red-brick house in Philadelphia and was about to board the street-car that would take him downtown to his office. At one point of the journey it was announced that an attempt had been made to blow up a bridge and that there were disturbances at the next station over the river; it might be that the train would be stopped and the passengers turned adrift or taken prisoner. Ashenden, thinking he might be separated from his luggage, took the precaution to change into his thickest clothes so that if he had to pass the winter in Siberia he need suffer as little as necessary from the cold; but Mr Harrington would not listen to reason; he made no preparations for the possible experience and Ashenden had the conviction that if he spent three months in a Russian prison he would still preserve that smart and natty appearance. A troop of Cossacks boarded the train and stood on the platform of each carriage with their guns loaded, and the train rattled gingerly over the damaged bridge; then they came to the station at which they had been warned of danger, put on steam and dashed straight through it. Mr Harrington was mildly satirical when Ashenden changed back into a light summer suit.

Mr Harrington was a keen business man. It was obvious that it would need someone very astute to overreach him, and Ashenden was sure that his employers had been well-advised to send him on this errand. He would safeguard their interests with all his might and if he succeeded in driving a bargain with the Russians it would be a hard one. His loyalty to his firm demanded that. He spoke of the partners with affectionate reverence. He loved them and was proud of them; but he did not envy them because their wealth was great. He was quite content to work on a salary and thought himself adequately paid; so long as he could educate his boys and leave his widow enough to live on, what was money to him? He thought it a trifle vulgar to be rich. He looked upon culture as more important than money. He was careful of it and after every meal put down in his note-book exactly what it had cost him. His firm might be certain that he would not charge a penny more for his expenses than he had spent. But having discovered that poor people came to the station at the stopping places of the train to beg and seeing that the war had really brought them to destitution he took care before each halt to supply himself with ample small change and in a shame-faced way, mocking himself for being taken in by such impostors, distributed everything in his pocket.

“Of course I know they don’t deserve it,” he said, “and I don’t do it for them. I do it entirely for my own peace of mind. I should feel so terribly badly if I thought some man really was hungry and I’d refused to give him the price of a meal.”

Mr Harrington was absurd, but lovable. It was inconceivable that anyone should be rude to him, it would have seemed as dreadful as hitting a child; and Ashenden, chafing inwardly but with a pretence of amiability, suffered meekly and with a truly Christian spirit the affliction of the gentle, ruthless creature’s society. It took eleven days at that time to get from Vladivostok to Petrograd, and Ashenden felt that he could not have borne another day. If it had been twelve he would have killed Mr Harrington.

When at last (Ashenden tired and dirty, Mr Harrington neat, sprightly and sententious) they reached the outskirts of Petrograd and stood at the windowlooking at the crowded houses of the city, Mr Harrington turned to Ashenden and said:

“Well, I never would have thought that eleven days in the train would pass so quickly. We’ve had a wonderful time. I’ve enjoyed your company and I know you’ve enjoyed mine. I’m not going to pretend I don’t know that I’m a pretty good conversationalist. But now we’ve come together like this we must take care to stay together. We must see as much of one another as we can while I’m in Petrograd.”

“I shall have a great deal to do,” said Ashenden. “I’m afraid my time won’t be altogether my own.”

“I know,” answered Mr Harrington cordially. “I expect to be pretty busy myself, but we can have breakfast together anyway and we’ll meet in the evening and compare notes. It would be too bad if we drifted apart now.”

“Too bad,” sighed Ashenden.

When Ashenden found himself alone in his bedroom for the first time, he sat down and looked about him. It had seemed an age. He had not the energy to start immediately to unpack. How many of these hotel bedrooms had he known since the beginning of the war, grand or shabby, in one place and one land after another! It seemed to him that he had been living in his luggage for as long as he could remember. He was weary. He asked himself how he was going to set about the work that he had been sent to do. He felt lost in the immensity of Russia and very solitary. He had protested when he was chosen for this mission, it looked too large an order, but his protests were ignored. He was chosen not because those in authority thought him particularly suited for the job, but because there was no one to be found who was more suited. There was a knock at the door and Ashenden, pleased to make use of the few words of the language he knew, called out in Russian. The door was opened. He sprang to his feet.

“Come in, come in,” he cried. “I’m awfully glad to see you.”

Three men entered. He knew them by sight, since they had travelled in the same ship with him from San Francisco to Yokohama, but following their instructions no communications had passed between them and Ashenden. They were Czechs, exiled from their country for their revolutionary activity and long settled in America, who had been sent over to Russia to help Ashenden in his mission and put him in touch with Professor Z., whose authority over the Czechs in Russia was absolute. Their chief was a certain Dr Egon Orth, a tall thin man, with a little grey head; he was minister to some church in the Middle West and a doctor of divinity; but had abandoned his cure to work for the liberation of his country, and Ashenden had the impression that he was an intelligent fellow who would not put too fine a point on matters of conscience. A parson with a fixed idea has this advantage over common men, that he can persuade himself of the Almighty’s approval for almost any goings-on. Dr Orth had a merry twinkle in his eye and a dry humour.

Ashenden had had two secret interviews with him in Yokohama and had learnt that Professor Z., though eager to free his country from the Austrian rule and, since he knew that this could only come about by the downfall of the Central Powers, with the Allies, body and soul, yet had scruples; he would not do things that outraged his conscience, all must be straightforward and above board, and so some things that it was necessary to do had to be done without his knowledge. His influence was so great that his wishes could not be disregarded, but on occasion it was felt better not to let him know too much of what was going on.

Dr Orth had arrived in Petrograd a week before Ashenden and now put before him what he had learned of the situation. It seemed to Ashenden that it was critical and if anything was to be done it must be done quickly. The army was dissatisfied and mutinous, the Government under the weak Kerensky was tottering and held power only because no one else had the courage to seize it, famine was staring the country in the face, and already the possibility had to be considered that the Germans would march on Petrograd. The Ambassadors of Great Britain and the United States had been apprised of Ashenden’s coming, but his mission was secret even from them, and there were particular reasons why he could demand no assistance from them. He arranged with Dr Orth to make an appointment with Professor Z. so that he could learn his views and explain to him that he had the financial means to support any scheme that • seemed likely to prevent the catastrophe that the Allied governments foresaw of Russia’s making a separate peace. But he had to get in touch with influential persons in all classes. Mr Harrington with his business proposition and his letters to Ministers of State would be thrown in contact with members of the Government and Mr Harrington wanted an interpreter. Dr Orth spoke Russian almost as well as his own language and it struck Ashenden that he would be admirably suited to the post. He explained the circumstances to him and it was arranged that while Ashenden and Mr Harrington were at luncheon Dr Orth should come in, greeting Ashenden as though he had not seen him before, and be introduced to Mr Harrington; then Ashenden, guiding the conversation, would suggest to Mr Harrington that the heavens had sent in Dr Orth the ideal man for his purpose.

But there was another person on whom Ashenden had fixed as possibly useful to him and now he said:

“Have you ever heard of a woman called Anastasia Alexandrovna Leonidov? She’s the daughter of Alexander Denisiev.”

“I know all about him of course.”

“I have reason to believe she’s in Petrograd. Will you find out where she lives and what she’s doing?”

“Certainly.”

Dr Orth spoke in Czech to one of the two men who accompanied him. They were sharp-looking fellows, both of them, one was tall and fair and the other was short and dark, but they were younger than Dr Orth, and Ashenden understood that they were there to do as he bade them. The man nodded, got up, shook hands with Ashenden and went out.

“You shall have all the information possible this afternoon.”

“Well, I think there’s nothing more we can do for the present,” said Ashenden. “To tell you the truth I haven’t had a bath for eleven days and I badly want one.”

Ashenden had never quite made up his mind whether the pleasure of reflection was better pursued in a railway carriage or in a bath. So far as the act of invention was concerned he was inclined to prefer a train that went smoothly and not too fast, and many of his best ideas had come to him when he was thus traversing the plains of France; but for the delight of reminiscence or the entertainment of embroidery upon a theme already in his head he had no doubt that nothing could compare with a hot bath. He considered now, wallowing in soapy water like a water-buffalo in a muddy pond, the grim pleasantry of his relations with Anastasia Alexandrovna Leonidov.

In these stories no more than the barest suggestion has been made that Ashenden was capable on occasions of the passion ironically called tender. The specialists in this matter, those charming creatures who make a business of what philosophers know is but a diversion, assert that writers, painters, and musicians, all in short who are connected with the arts, in the relation of love cut no very conspicuous figure. There is much cry but little wool. They rave or sigh, make phrases and strike many a romantic attitude, but in the end, loving art or themselves (which with them is one and the same thing) better than the object of their emotion, offer a shadow when the said object, with the practical common sense of the sex, demands a substance. It may be so and this may be the reason (never before suggested) why women in their souls look upon art with such a virulent hatred. Be this as it may Ashenden in the last twenty years had felt his heart go pit-a-pat because of one charming person after another. He had had a good deal of fun and had paid for it with a great deal of misery, but even when suffering most acutely from the pangs of unrequited love he had been able to say to himself, albeit with a wry face, after all, it’s grist to the mill.

Anastasia Alexandrovna Leonidov was the daughter of a revolutionary who had escaped from Siberia after being sentenced to penal servitude for life and had settled in England. He was an able man and had supported himself for thirty years by the activity of a restless pen and had even made himself a distinguished position in English letters. When Anastasia Alexandrovna reached a suitable age she married Vladimir Semenovich Leonidov, also an exile from his native country, and it was after she had been married to him for some years that Ashenden made her acquaintance. It was at the time when Europe discovered Russia. Everyone was reading the Russian novelists, the Russian dancers captivated the civilized world, and the Russian composers set shivering the sensibility of persons who were beginning to want a change from Wagner. Russian art seized upon Europe with the virulence of an epidemic of influenza. New phrases became the fashion, new colours, new emotions, and the highbrows described themselves without a moment’s hesitation as members of the intelligentsia. It was a difficult word to spell but an easy one to say. Ashenden fell like the rest, changed the cushions of his sitting-room, hung an icon on the wall, read Chekhov and went to the ballet.

Anastasia Alexandrovna was by birth, circumstances, and education very much a member of the intelligentsia. She lived with her husband in a tiny house near Regent’s Park and here all the literary folk in London might gaze with humble reverence at pale-faced bearded giants who leaned against the wall like caryatids taking a day off; they were revolutionaries to a man and it was a miracle that they were not in the mines of Siberia. Women of letters tremulously put their lips to a glass of vodka. If you were lucky and greatly favoured you might shake hands there with Diaghilev, and now and again, like a peach-blossom wafted by the breeze, Pavlova herself hovered in and out. At this time Ashenden’s success had not been so great as to affront the highbrows, he had very distinctly been one of them in his youth, and though some already looked askance, others (optimistic creatures with a faith in human nature) still had hopes of him. Anastasia Alexandrovna told him to his face that he was a member of the intelligentsia. Ashenden was quite ready to believe it. He was in a state when he was ready to believe anything. He was thrilled and excited. It seemed to him that at last he was about to capture that illusive spirit of romance that he had so long been chasing. Anastasia Alexandrovna had fine eyes and a good, though for these days too voluptuous, figure, high cheek-bones and a snub nose (this was very Tartar), a wide mouth full of large square teeth, and a pale skin. She dressed somewhat flamboyantly. In her dark melancholy eyes Ashenden saw the boundless steppes of Russia, and the Kremlin with its pealing bells, and the solemn ceremonies of Easter at St Isaac’s, and forests of silver beeches, and the Nevsky Prospekt; it was astonishing how much he saw in her eyes. They were round and shining and slightly protuberant like those of a Pekinese. They talked together of Alyosha in the Brothers Karamazov, of Natasha in War and Peace, of Anna Karenina, and of Fathers and Sons.

Ashenden soon discovered that her husband was quite unworthy of her and presently learned that she shared his opinion. Vladimir Semenovich was a little man with a large, long head that looked as though it had been pulled like a piece of liquorice, and he had a great shock of unruly Russian hair. He was a gentle, unobtrusive creature and it was hard to believe that the Czarist government had really feared his revolutionary activities. He taught Russian and wrote for papers in Moscow. He was amiable and obliging. He needed these qualities, for Anastasia Alexandrovna was a woman of character: when she had a toothache Vladimir Semenovich suffered the agonies of the damned, and when her heart was wrung by the suffering of her unhappy country Vladimir Semenovich might well have wished he had never been born. Ashenden could not help admitting that he was a poor thing, but he was so harmless that he conceived quite a liking for him, and when in due course he had disclosed his passion to Anastasia Alexandrovna and to his joy found it was returned he was puzzled to know what to do about Vladimir Semenovich. Neither Anastasia Alexandrovna nor he felt that they could live another minute out of one another’s pockets, and Ashenden feared that, with her revolutionary views and all that, she would never consent to marry him; but somewhat to his surprise, and very much to his relief, she accepted the suggestion with alacrity.

“Would Vladimir Semenovich let himself be divorced, do you think?” he asked, as he sat on the sofa, leaning against cushions the colour of which reminded him of raw meat just gone bad, and held her hand.

“Vladimir adores me,” she answered. “It’ll break his heart.”

“He’s a nice fellow, I shouldn’t like him to be very unhappy. I hope he’ll get over it.”

“He’ll never get over it. That is the Russian spirit. I know that when I leave him he’ll feel that he has lost everything that made life worth living for him. I’ve never known anyone so wrapped up in a woman as he is in me. But of course he wouldn’t want to stand in the way of my happiness. He’s far too great for that. He’ll see that when it’s a question of my own self-development I haven’t the right to hesitate. Vladimir will give me my freedom without question.”

At that time the divorce law in England was even more complicated and absurd than it is now and in case she was not acquainted with its peculiarities Ashenden explained to Anastasia Alexandrovna the difficulties of the case. She put her hand gently on his.

“Vladimir would never expose me to the vulgar notoriety of the divorce court. When I tell him that I have decided to marry you he will commit suicide.”

“That would be terrible,” said Ashenden.

He was startled, but thrilled. It was really very much like a Russian novel and he saw the moving and terrible pages, pages and pages, in which Dostoyevsky would have described the situation. He knew the lacerations his characters would have suffered, the broken bottles of champagne, the visits to the gipsies, the vodka, the swoonings, the catalepsy, and the long, long speeches everyone would have made. It was all very dreadful and wonderful and shattering.

“It would make us horribly unhappy,” said Anastasia Alexandrovna, “but I don’t know what else he could do. I couldn’t ask him to live without me. He would be like a ship without a rudder or a car without a carburettor. I know Vladimir so well. He will commit suicide.”

“How?” asked Ashenden, who had the realist’s passion for the exact detail.

“He will blow his brains out.”

Ashenden remembered Rosmersholm. In his day he had been an ardent Ibsenite and had even flirted with the notion of learning Norwegian so that he might, by reading the master in the original, get at the secret essence of his thought. He had once seen Ibsen in the flesh drink a glass of Munich beer.

“But do you think we could ever pass another easy hour if we had the death of that man on our conscience?” he asked. “I have a feeling that he would always be between us.”

“I know we shall suffer, we shall suffer dreadfully,” said Anastasia Alexandrovna, “but how can we help it? Life is like that. We must think of Vladimir. There is his happiness to be considered too. He will prefer to commit suicide.”

She turned her face away and Ashenden saw that the heavy tears were coursing down her cheeks. He was much moved. For he had a soft heart and it was dreadful to think of poor Vladimir lying there with a bullet in his brain.

These Russians, what fun they have!

But when Anastasia Alexandrovna had mastered her emotion she turned to him gravely. She looked at him with her humid, round, and slightly protuberant eyes.

“We must be quite sure that we’re doing the right thing,” she said. “I should never forgive myself if I’d allowed Vladimir to commit suicide and then found I’d made a mistake. I think we ought to make sure that we really love one another.”

“But don’t you know?” exclaimed Ashenden in a low, tense voice. “I know.”

“Let’s go over to Paris for a week and see how we get on. Then we shall know.”

Ashenden was a trifle conventional and the suggestion took him by surprise. But only for a moment. Anastasia was wonderful. She was very quick and she saw the hesitation that for an instant troubled him.

“Surely you have no bourgeois prejudices?” she said.

“Of course not,” he assured her hurriedly, for he would much sooner have been thought knavish than bourgeois, “I think it’s a splendid idea.”

“Why should a woman hazard her whole life on a throw? It’s impossible to know what a man is really like till you’ve lived with him. It’s only fair to give her the opportunity to change her mind before it’s too late.”

“Quite so,” said Ashenden.

Anastasia Alexandrovna was not a woman to let the grass grow under her feet and so having made their arrangements forthwith on the following Saturday they started for Paris.

“I shall not tell Vladimir that I am going with you,” she said. “It would only distress him.”

“It would be a pity to do that,” said Ashenden.

“And if at the end of the week I come to the conclusion that we’ve made a mistake he need never know anything about it.”

“Quite so,” said Ashenden. They met at Victoria Station. “What class have you got?” she asked him. “First.”

“I’m glad of that. Father and Vladimir travel third on account of their principles, but I always feel sick on a train and I like to be able to lean my head on somebody’s shoulder. It’s easier in a first-class carriage.”

When the train started Anastasia Alexandrovna said she felt dizzy, so she took off her hat and leaned her head on Ashenden’s shoulder. He put his arm round her waist.

“Keep quite still, won’t you?” she said.

When they got on to the boat she went down to the ladies’ cabin and at Calais was able to eat a very hearty meal, but when they got into the train she took off her hat again and rested her head on Ashenden’s shoulder. He thought he would like to read and took up a book.

“Do you mind not reading?” she said.” I have to be held and when you turn the pages it makes me feel all funny.”

Finally they reached Paris and went to a little hotel on the Left Bank that Anastasia Alexandrovna knew of. She said it had atmosphere. She could not bear those great big grand hotels on the other side; they were hopelessly vulgar and bourgeois.

“I’ll go anywhere you like,” said Ashenden, “as long as there’s a bathroom.” She smiled and pinched his cheek.

“How adorably English you are. Can’t you do without a bathroom for a week? My dear, my dear, you have so much to learn.”

They talked far into the night about Maxim Gorki and Karl Marx, human destiny, love, and the brotherhood of man; and drank innumerable cups of Russian tea, so that in the morning Ashenden would willingly have breakfasted in bed and got up for luncheon; but Anastasia Alexandrovna was an early riser. When life was so short and there was so much to do it was a sinful thing to have breakfast a minute after half past eight. They sat down in a dingy little dining-room the windows of which showed no signs of having been opened for a month. It was full of atmosphere. Ashenden asked Anastasia Alexandrovna what she would have for breakfast.

“Scrambled eggs,” she said.

She ate heartily. Ashenden had already noticed that she had a healthy appetite. He supposed it was a Russian trait; you could not picture Anna Karenina making her midday meal off a bath-bun and a cup of coffee, could you?

After breakfast they went to the Louvre and in the afternoon they went to the Luxembourg. They dined early in order to go to the Comedie Fran^aise; then they went to a Russian cabaret where they danced. When next morning at eight-thirty they took their places in the dining-room and Ashenden asked Anastasia Alexandrovna what she fancied, her reply was:

“Scrambled eggs.”

“But we had scrambled eggs yesterday,” he expostulated.

“Let’s have them again today,” she smiled.

“All right.”

They spent the day in the same manner except that they went to the Carnavalet instead of the Louvre and the Musée Guimet instead of the Luxembourg. But when the morning after in answer to Ashenden’s inquiry Anastasia Alexandrovna again asked for scrambled eggs, his heart sank.

“But we had scrambled eggs yesterday and the day before,” he said.

“Don’t you think that’s a very good reason to have them again today?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Is it possible that your sense of humour is a little deficient this morning?” she asked. “I eat scrambled eggs every day. It’s the only way I like them.”

“Oh, very well. In that case of course we’ll have scrambled eggs.”

But the following morning he could not face them.

“Will you have scrambled eggs as usual?” he asked her.

“Of course,” she smiled affectionately, showing him two rows of large square teeth.

“All right, I’ll order them for you; I shall have mine fried.” The smile vanished from her lips.

“Oh?” She paused a moment. “Don’t you think that’s rather inconsiderate? Do you think it’s fair to give the cook unnecessary work? You English, you’re all the same, you look upon servants as machines. Does it occur to you that they have hearts like yours, the same feelings and the same emotions? How can you be surprised that the proletariat are seething with discontent when the bourgeoisie like you are so monstrously selfish?”

“Do you really think that there’ll be a revolution in England if I have my eggs in Paris fried rather than scrambled?”

She tossed her pretty head in indignation.

“You don’t understand. It’s the principle of the thing. You think it’s a jest, of course I know you’re being funny, I can laugh at a joke as well as anyone, Chekhov was well-known in Russia as a humorist; but don’t you see what is involved? Your whole attitude is wrong. It’s a lack of feeling. You wouldn’t talk like that if you had been through the events of 1905 in Petersburg. When I think of the crowds in front of the Winter Palace kneeling in the snow while the Cossacks charged them, women and children! No, no, no.”

Her eyes filled with tears and her face was all twisted with pain. She took Ashenden’s hand.

“I know you have a good heart. It was just thoughtless on your part and we won’t say anything more about it. You have imagination. You’re very sensitive. I know. You’ll have your eggs done in the same way as mine, won’t you?”

“Of course,” said Ashenden.

He ate scrambled eggs for breakfast every morning after that. The waiter said: “Monsieur aime les oeufs brouillés.” At the end of the week they returned to London. He held Anastasia Alexandrovna in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder, from Paris to Calais and again from Dover to London. He reflected that the journey from New York to San Francisco took five days. When they arrived at Victoria and stood on the platform waiting for a cab she looked at him with her round, shining, and slightly protuberant eyes.

“We’ve had a wonderful time, haven’t we?” she said.

“Wonderful.”

“I’ve quite made up my mind. The experiment has justified itself. I’m quite willing to marry you whenever you like.”

But Ashenden saw himself eating scrambled eggs every morning for the rest of his life. When he had put her in a cab, he called another for himself, went to the Cunard office, and took a berth on the first ship that was going to America. No immigrant, eager for freedom and a new life, ever looked upon the statue of Liberty with more heartfelt thankfulness than did Ashenden, when on that bright and sunny morning his ship steamed into the harbour of New York.

Some years had passed since then and Ashenden had not seen Anastasia Alexandrovna again. He knew that on the outbreak of the revolution in March she and Vladimir Semenovich had gone to Russia. It might be that they would be able to help him, in a way Vladimir Semenovich owed him his life, and he made up his mind to write to Anastasia Alexandrovna to ask if he might come to see her.

When Ashenden went down to lunch he felt somewhat rested. Mr Harrington was waiting for him and they sat down. They ate what was put before them.

“Ask the waiter to bring us some bread,” said Mr Harrington.

“Bread?” replied Ashenden. “There’s no bread.”

“I can’t eat without bread,” said Mr Harrington.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to. There’s no bread, no butter, no sugar, no eggs, no potatoes. There’s fish and meat and green vegetables, and that’s all.”

Mr Harrington’s jaw dropped.

“But this is war,” he said.

“It looks very much like it.”

Mr Harrington was for a moment speechless; then he said: “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to get through with my business as quick as I can and then I’m going to get out of this country. I’m sure Mrs Harrington wouldn’t like me to go without sugar or butter. I’ve got a very delicate stomach. The firm would never have sent me here if they’d thought I wasn’t going to have the best of everything.”

In a little while Dr Egon Orth came in and gave Ashenden an envelope. On it was written Anastasia Alexandrovna’s address. He introduced him to Mr Harrington. It was soon clear that he was pleased with Dr Egon Orth and so without further to-do he suggested that here was the perfect interpreter for him.

“He talks Russian like a Russian. But he’s an American citizen so that he won’t do you down. I’ve known him a considerable time and I can assure you that he’s absolutely trustworthy.”

Mr Harrington was pleased with the notion and after luncheon Ashenden left them to settle the matter by themselves. He wrote a note to Anastasia Alexandrovna and presently received an answer to say that she was going to a meeting, but would look in at his hotel about seven. He awaited her with apprehension. Of course he knew now that he had not loved her, but Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky, and Bakst; but he was not quite sure if the point had occurred to her. When between eight and half past she arrived he suggested that she should join Mr Harrington and him at dinner. The presence of a third party, he thought, would prevent any awkwardness their meeting might have; but he need not have had any anxiety, for five minutes after they had sat down to a plate of soup it was borne in upon him that the feelings of Anastasia Alexandrovna towards him were as cool as were his towards her. It gave him a momentary shock. It is very hard for a man, however modest, to grasp the possibility that a woman who has once loved him may love him no longer, and though of course he did not imagine that Anastasia Alexandrovna had languished for five years with a hopeless passion for him, he did think that by a heightening of colour, a flutter of the eyelashes, or a quiver of the lips’ she would betray the fact that she had still a soft place in her heart for him. Not at all. She talked to him as though he were a friend she was very glad to see again after an absence of a few days, but whose intimacy with her was purely social. He asked after Vladimir Semenovich.

“He has been a disappointment to me,” she said. “I never thought he was a clever man, but I thought he was an honest one. He’s going to have a baby.”

Mr Harrington who was about to put a piece of fish into his mouth, stopped, his fork in the air, and stared at Anastasia Alexandrovna with astonishment. In extenuation it must be explained that he had never read a Russian novel in his life. Ashenden, slightly perplexed too, gave her a questioning look.

“I’m not the mother,” she said with a laugh. “I am not interested in that sort of thing. The mother is a friend of mine and a well-known writer on Political Economy. I do not think her views are sound, but I should be the last to deny that they deserve consideration. She has a good brain, quite a good brain.” She turned to Mr Harrington. “Are you interested in Political Economy?”

For once in his life Mr Harrington was speechless. Anastasia Alexandrovna gave them her views on the subject and they began to speak on the situation in Russia. She seemed to be on intimate terms with the leaders of the various political parties and Ashenden made up his mind to sound her on the possibility of her working with him. His infatuation had not blinded him to the fact that she was an extremely intelligent woman. After dinner he told Mr Harrington that he wished to talk business with Anastasia Alexandrovna and took her to a retired corner of the lounge. He told her all he thought necessary and found her interested and anxious to help. She had a passion for intrigue and a desire for power. When he hinted that he had command of large sums of money she saw at once that through him she might acquire an influence in the affairs of Russia. It tickled her vanity. She was immensely patriotic, but like many patriots she had an impression that her own aggrandizement tended to the good of her country. When they parted they had come to a working agreement.

“That was a very remarkable woman,” said Mr Harrington next morning when they met at breakfast.

“Don’t fall in love with her,” smiled Ashenden.

This, however, was not a matter on which Mr Harrington was prepared to jest.

“I have never looked at a woman since I married Mrs Harrington,” he said. “That husband of hers must be a bad man.”

“I could do with a plate of scrambled eggs,” said Ashenden, irrelevantly, for their breakfast consisted of a cup of tea without milk and a little jam instead of sugar.

With Anastasia Alexandrovna to help him and Dr Orth in the background, Ashenden set to work. Things in Russia were going from bad to worse. Kerensky, the head of the Provisional Government, was devoured by vanity and dismissed any minister who gave evidence of a capacity that might endanger his own position. He made speeches. He made endless speeches. At one moment there was a possibility that the Germans would make a dash for Petrograd. Kerensky made speeches. The food shortage grew more serious, the winter was approaching and there was no fuel. Kerensky made speeches. In the background the Bolsheviks were active, Lenin was hiding in Petrograd, it was said that Kerensky knew where he was, but dared not arrest him. He made speeches.

It amused Ashenden to see the unconcern with which Mr Harrington wandered through this turmoil. History was in the making and Mr Harrington minded his own business. It was uphill work. He was made to pay bribes to secretaries and underlings under the pretence that the ear of great men would be granted to him. He was kept waiting for hours in antechambers and then sent away without ceremony. When at last he saw the great men he found they had nothing to give him but idle words. They made him promises and in a day or two he discovered that the promises meant nothing. Ashenden advised him to throw in his hand and return to America; but Mr Harrington would not hear of it; his firm had sent him to do a particular job, and by gum, he was going to do it or perish in the attempt. Then Anastasia Alexandrovna took him in hand. A singular friendship had arisen between the pair. Mr Harrington thought her a very remarkable and deeply wronged woman; he told her all about his wife and two sons, he told her all about the Constitution of the United States; she on her side told him all about Vladimir Semenovich, and she told him about Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoyevsky. They had great times together. He said he couldn’t manage to call her Anastasia Alexandrovna, it was too much of a mouthful; so he called her Delilah. And now she placed her inexhaustible energy at his service and they went together to the persons who might be useful to him. But things were coming to a head. Riots broke out and the streets were growing dangerous. Now and then armoured cars filled with discontented reservists careered wildly along the Nevsky Prospekt and in order to show that they were not happy took pot-shots at the passers by. On one occasion when Mr Harrington and Anastasia Alexandrovna were in a tram together shots peppered the windows and they had to lie down on the floor for safety. Mr Harrington was highly indignant.

“An old fat woman was lying right on top of me and when I wriggled to get out Delilah caught me a clip on the side of the head and said: Stop still, you fool. I don’t like your Russian ways, Delilah.”

“Anyhow you stopped still,” she giggled.

“What you want in this country is a little less art and a little more civilization.”

“You are bourgeoisie, Mr Harrington, you are not a member of the intelligentsia.”

“You are the first person who’s ever said that, Delilah. If I’m not a member of the intelligentsia I don’t know who is,” retorted Mr Harrington with dignity.

Then one day when Ashenden was working in his room there was a knock at the door and Anastasia Alexandrovna stalked in, followed somewhat sheepishly by Mr Harrington. Ashenden saw that she was excited.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Unless this man goes back to America he’ll get killed. You really must talk to him. If I hadn’t been there something very unpleasant might have happened to him.”

“Not at all, Delilah,” said Mr Harrington, with asperity. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself and I wasn’t in the smallest danger.”

“What is it all about?” asked Ashenden.

“I’d taken Mr Harrington to the Lavra of Alexander Nevsky to see Dostoyevsky’s grave,” said Anastasia Alexandrovna, “and on our way back we saw a soldier being rather rough with an old woman.”

“Rather rough!” cried Mr Harrington. “There was an old woman walking along the pavement with a basket of provisions on her arm. Two soldiers came up behind her and one of them snatched the basket from her and walked off with it.

She burst out screaming and crying. I don’t know what she was saying, but I can guess, and the other soldier took his gun and with the butt-end of it hit her over the head. Isn’t that right, Delilah?”

“Yes,” she answered, unable to help smiling. “And before I could prevent it Mr Harrington jumped out of the cab and ran up to the soldier who had the basket, wrenched it from him and began to abuse the pair of them like pickpockets. At first they were so taken aback they didn’t know what to do and then they got in a rage. I ran after Mr Harrington and explained to them that he was a foreigner and drunk.”

“Drunk?” cried Mr Harrington.

“Yes, drunk. Of course a crowd collected. It looked as though it wasn’t going to be very nice.”

Mr Harrington smiled with those large, pale-blue eyes of his.

“It sounded to me as though you were giving them a piece of your mind, Delilah. It was as good as a play to watch you.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mr Harrington,” cried Anastasia, in a sudden fury, stamping her foot. “Don’t you know that those soldiers might very easily have killed you and me too, and not one of the bystanders would have raised a finger to help us?”

“Me? I’m an American citizen, Delilah. They wouldn’t dare touch a hair of my head.”

“They’d have difficulty in finding one,” said Anastasia Alexandrovna, who when she was in a temper had no manners. “But if you think Russian soldiers are going to hesitate to kill you because you’re an American citizen you’ll get a big surprise one of these days.”

“Well, what happened to the old woman?” asked Ashenden.

“The soldiers went off after a little and we went back to her.”

“Still with the basket?”

“Yes. Mr Harrington clung on to that like grim death. She was lying on the ground with the blood pouring from her head. We got her into the cab and when she could speak enough to tell us where she lived we drove her home. She was bleeding dreadfully and we had some difficulty in staunching the blood.”

Anastasia Alexandrovna gave Mr Harrington an odd look and to his surprise Ashenden saw him turn scarlet.

“What’s the matter now?”

“You see, we had nothing to bind her up with. Mr Harrington’s handkerchief was soaked. There was only one thing about me that I could get off quickly and so I took off my …”

But before she could finish Mr Harrington interrupted her.

“You need not tell Mr Ashenden what you took off. I’m a married man and I know ladies wear them, but I see no need to refer to them in general society.”

Anastasia Alexandrovna giggled.

“Then you must kiss me, Mr Harrington. If you don’t I shall say.”

Mr Harrington hesitated a moment, considering evidently the pros and cons of the matter, but saw that Anastasia Alexandrovna was determined.

“Go on then, you may kiss me, Delilah, though I’m bound to say I don’t see what pleasure it can be to you.”

She put her arms round his neck and kissed him on both cheeks, then without a word of warning burst into a flood of tears.

“You’re a brave little man, Mr Harrington. You’re absurd but magnificent,” she sobbed.

Mr Harrington was less surprised than Ashenden would have expected him to be. He looked at Anastasia with a thin, quizzical smile and gently patted her.

“Come, come, Delilah, pull yourself together. It gave you a nasty turn, didn’t it? You’re quite upset. I shall have terrible rheumatism in my shoulder if you go on weeping all over it.”

The scene was ridiculous and touching. Ashenden laughed, but he had the beginnings of a lump in his throat.

When Anastasia Alexandrovna had left them Mr Harrington sat in a brown study.

“They’re very queer, these Russians. Do you know what Delilah did?” he said, suddenly. “She stood up in the cab, in the middle of the street, with people passing on both sides, and took her pants off. She tore them in two and gave me one to hold while she made a bandage of the other. I was never so embarrassed in my life.”

“Tell me what gave you the idea of calling her Delilah?” smiled Ashenden.

Mr Harrington reddened a little.

“She’s a very fascinating woman, Mr Ashenden. She’s been deeply wronged by her husband and I naturally felt a great deal of sympathy for her. These Russians are very emotional people and I did not want her to mistake my sympathy for anything else. I told her I was very much attached to Mrs Harrington.”

“You’re not under the impression that Delilah was Potiphar’s wife?” asked Ashenden.

“I don’t know what you mean by that, Mr Ashenden,” replied Mr Harrington. “Mrs Harrington has always given me to understand that I’m very fascinating to women, and I thought if I called our little friend Delilah it would make my position quite clear.”

“I don’t think Russia’s any place for you, Mr Harrington,” said Ashenden smiling. “If I were you I’d get out of it as quick as I could.”

“I can’t go now. I’ve got them to agree to my terms at last and we’re going to sign next week. Then I shall pack my grip and go.”

“I wonder if your signatures will be worth the paper they’re written on,” said Ashenden.

He had at length devised a plan of campaign. It took him twenty-four hours’ hard work to code a telegram in which he put his scheme before the persons who had sent him to Petrograd. It was accepted and he was promised all the money he needed. Ashenden knew he could do nothing unless the Provisional Government remained in power for another three months; but winter was at hand and food was getting scarcer every day. The army was mutinous. The people clamoured for peace. Every evening at the Europe Ashenden drank a cup of chocolate with Professor Z. and discussed with him how best to make use of his devoted Czechs. Anastasia Alexandrovna had a flat in a retired spot and here he had meetings with all manner of persons. Plans were drawn up. Measures were taken. Ashenden argued, persuaded, promised. He had to overcome the vacillation of one and wrestle with the fatalism of another. He had to judge who was resolute and who was self-sufficient, who was honest and who was infirm of purpose. He had to curb his impatience with the Russian verbosity; he had to be good-tempered with people who were willing to talk of everything but the matter in hand; he had to listen sympathetically to ranting and rodomontade. He had to beware of treachery. He had to humour the vanity of fools and elude the greed of the ambitious. Time was pressing. The rumours grew hot and many of the activities of the Bolsheviks. Kerensky ran hither and thither like a frightened hen.

Then the blow fell. On the night of 7 November 1917 the Bolsheviks rose. Kerensky’s ministers were arrested, and the Winter Palace was sacked by the mob; the reins of power were seized by Lenin and Trotsky.

Anastasia Alexandrovna came to Ashenden’s room at the hotel early in the morning. Ashenden was coding a telegram. He had been up all night, first at the Smolny, and then at the Winter Palace. He was tired out. Her face was white and her shining brown eyes were tragic.

“Have you heard?” she asked Ashenden.

He nodded.

“It’s all over then. They say Kerensky has fled. They never even showed fight.” Rage seized her. “The buffoon!” she screamed.

At that moment there was a knock at the door and Anastasia Alexandrovna looked at it with sudden apprehension.

“You know the Bolsheviks have got a list of people they’ve decided to execute. My name is on it, and it may be that yours is too.”

“If it’s they and they want to come in they only have to turn the handle,” said Ashenden, smiling, but with ever so slightly odd a feeling at the pit of his stomach. “Come in.”

The door was opened and Mr Harrington stepped into the room. He was as dapper as ever, in his short black coat and striped trousers, his shoes neatly polished and a derby on his bald head. He took it off when he saw Anastasia Alexandrovna.

“Oh, fancy finding you here so early. I looked in on my way out, I wanted to tell you my news. I tried to find you yesterday evening, but couldn’t. You didn’t come in to dinner.”

“No, I was at a meeting,” said Ashenden.

“You must both congratulate me, I got my signatures yesterday, and my business is done.”

Mr Harrington beamed on them, the picture of self-satisfaction, and he arched himself like a bantam-cock who has chased away all rivals. Anastasia Alexandrovna burst into a sudden shriek of hysterical laughter. He stared at her in perplexity.

“Why, Delilah, what is the matter?” he said.

Anastasia laughed till the tears ran from her eyes and then began to sob in earnest. Ashenden explained.

“The Bolsheviks have overthrown the Government. Kerensky’s ministers are in prison. The Bolsheviks are out to kill. Delilah says her name is on the list. Your minister signed your documents yesterday because he knew it did not matter what he did then. Your contracts are worth nothing. The Bolsheviks are going to make peace with Germany as soon as they can.”

Anastasia Alexandrovna had recovered her self-control as quickly as she had lost it.

“You had better get out of Russia as soon as you can, Mr Harrington. It’s no place for a foreigner now and it may be that in a few days you won’t be able to.”

Mr Harrington looked from one to the other.

“O my,” he said. “O my!” It seemed inadequate. “Are you going to tell me that that Russian minister was just making a fool of me?”

Ashenden shrugged his shoulders.

“How can one tell what he was thinking of? He may have a keen sense of humour and perhaps he thought it funny to sign a fifty-million-dollar contract yesterday when there was every chance of his being stood against the wall and shot today. Anastasia Alexandrovna’s right, Mr Harrington, you’d better take the first train that’ll get you to Sweden.”

“And what about you?”

“There’s nothing for me to do here any more. I’m cabling for instructions and I shall go as soon as I get leave. The Bolsheviks have got ahead of us and the people I was working with will have their work cut out to save their lives.”

“Boris Petrovich was shot this morning,” said Anastasia Alexandrovna with a frown.

They both looked at Mr Harrington and he stared at the floor. His pride in this achievement of his was shattered and he sagged like a pricked balloon. But in a minute he looked up. He gave Anastasia Alexandrovna a little smile and for the first time Ashenden noticed how attractive and kindly his smile was. There was something peculiarly disarming about it.

“If the Bolsheviks are after you, Delilah, don’t you think you’d better come with me? I’ll take care of you and if you like to come to America I’m sure Mrs Harrington would be glad to do anything she could for you.”

“I can see Mrs Harrington’s face if you arrived in Philadelphia with a Russian refugee,” laughed Anastasia Alexandrovna. “I’m afraid it would need more explaining than you could ever manage. No, I shall stay here.”

“But if you’re in danger?”

“I’m a Russian. My place is here. I will not leave my country when most my country needs me.”

“That is bunk, Delilah,” said Mr Harrington very quietly.

Anastasia Alexandrovna had spoken with deep emotion, but now with a little start she shot a sudden quizzical look at him.

“I know it is, Samson,” she answered. “To tell you the truth I think we’re all going to have a hell of a time, God knows what’s going to happen, but I want to see; I wouldn’t miss a minute of it for the world.”

Mr Harrington shook his head.

“Curiosity is the bane of your sex, Delilah,” he said.

“Go along and do your packing, Mr Harrington,” said Ashenden, smiling, “and then we’ll take you to the station. The train will be besieged.

“Very well, I’ll go. And I shan’t be sorry either. I haven’t had a decent meal since I came here and I’ve done a thing I never thought I should have to do in my life, I’ve drunk my coffee without sugar and when I’ve been lucky enough to get a little piece of black bread I’ve had to eat it without butter. Mrs Harrington will never believe me when I tell her what I’ve gone through. What this country wants is organization.”

When he left them Ashenden and Anastasia Alexandrovna talked over the situation. Ashenden was depressed because all his careful schemes had come to nothing, but Anastasia Alexandrovna was excited and she hazarded every sort of guess about the outcome of this new revolution. She pretended to be very serious, but in her heart she looked upon it all very much as a thrilling play. She wanted more and more things to happen. Then there was another knock at the door and before Ashenden could answer Mr Harrington burst in.

“Really the service at this hotel is a scandal,” he cried heatedly, “I’ve been ringing my bell for fifteen minutes and I can’t get anyone to pay the smallest attention to me.”

“Service?” exclaimed Anastasia Alexandrovna. “There is not a servant left in the hotel.”

“But I want my laundry. They promised to let me have it back last night.”

“I’m afraid you haven’t got much chance of getting it now,” said Ashenden.

“I’m not going to leave without my laundry. Four shirts, two union suits, a pair of pyjamas, and four collars. I wash my handkerchiefs and socks in my room. I want my laundry and I’m not going to leave this hotel without it.”

“Don’t be a fool,” cried Ashenden. “What you’ve got to do is to get out of here while the going’s good. If there are no servants to get it you’ll just have to leave your washing behind you.”

“Pardon me, sir, I shall do nothing of the kind. I’ll go and fetch it myself. I’ve suffered enough at the hands of this country and I’m not going to leave four perfectly good shirts to be worn by a lot of dirty Bolsheviks. No, sir, I do not leave Russia till I have my laundry.”

Anastasia Alexandrovna stared at the floor for a moment; then with a little smile looked up. It seemed to Ashenden that there was something in her that responded to Mr Harrington’s futile obstinacy. In her Russian way she understood that Mr Harrington could not leave Petrograd without his washing. His insistence had given it the value of a symbol.

“I’ll go downstairs and see if I can find anybody about who knows where the laundry is, and if I can I’ll go with you and you can bring your washing away with you.”

Mr Harrington unbent. He answered with that sweet and disarming smile of his.

“That’s terribly kind of you, Delilah. I don’t mind if it’s ready or not, I’ll take it just as it is.”

Anastasia Alexandrovna left them.

“Well, what do you think of Russia and the Russians now, Mr Harrington?” asked Ashenden.

“I’m fed up with them. I’m fed up with Tolstoy, I’m fed up with Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, I’m fed up with Chekhov. I’m fed up with the Intelligentsia. I hanker after people who know their mind from one minute to another, who mean what they say an hour after they’ve said it, whose word you can rely on; I’m sick of fine phrases, and oratory and attitudinizing.”

Ashenden, bitten by the prevailing ill, was about to make a speech when he was interrupted by a rattle as of peas on a drum. In the city, so strangely silent, it sounded abrupt and odd.

“What’s that?” asked Mr Harrington.

“Rifle-firing. On the other side of the river, I should think.”

Mr Harrington gave a funny little look. He laughed, but his face was a trifle pale; he did not like it, and Ashenden did not blame him.

“I think it’s high time I got out. I shouldn’t so much mind for myself, but I’ve got a wife and children to think of. I haven’t had a letter from Mrs Harrington for so long I’m a bit worried.” He paused an instant. “I’d like you to know Mrs Harrington, she’s a very wonderful woman. She’s the best wife a man ever had. Until I came here I’d not been separated from her for more than three days since we were married.”

Anastasia Alexandrovna came back and told them that she had found the address.

“It’s about forty minutes’ walk from here and if you’ll come now I’ll go with you,” she said.

“I’m ready.”

“You’d better look out,” said Ashenden. “I don’t believe the streets are very healthy today.”

Anastasia Alexandrovna looked at Mr Harrington.

“I must have my laundry, Delilah,” he said. “I should never rest in peace if I left it behind me and Mrs Harrington would never let me hear the last of it.”

“Come on then.”

They set out and Ashenden went on with the dreary business of translating into a very complicated code the shattering news he had to give. It was a long message, and then he had to ask for instructions upon his own movements. It was a mechanical job and yet it was one in which you could not allow your attention to wander. The mistake of a single figure might make a whole sentence incomprehensible.

Suddenly his door was burst open and Anastasia Alexandrovna flung into the room. She had lost her hat and was dishevelled. She was panting. Her eyes were starting out of her head and she was obviously in a state of great excitement.

“Where’s Mr Harrington?” she cried. “Isn’t he here?”

“No.”

“Is he in his bedroom?”

“I don’t know. Why, what’s the matter? We’ll go and look if you like. Why didn’t you bring him along with you?”

They walked down the passage and knocked at Mr Harrington’s door; there was no answer; they tried the handle; the door was locked.

“He’s not there.”

They went back to Ashenden’s room. Anastasia Alexandrovna sank into a chair.

“Give me a glass of water, will you? I’m out of breath. I’ve been running.”

She drank the water Ashenden poured out for her. She gave a sudden sob.

“I hope he’s all right. I should never forgive myself if he was hurt. I was hoping he would have got here before me. He got his washing all right. We found the place. There was only an old woman there and they didn’t want to let us take it, but we insisted. Mr Harrington was furious because it hadn’t been touched. It was exactly as he had sent it. They’d promised it last night and it was still in the bundle that Mr Harrington had made himself. I said that was Russia and Mr Harrington said he preferred coloured people. I’d led him by side streets because I thought it was better, and we started to come back again. We passed at the top of a street and at the bottom of it I saw a little crowd. There was a man addressing them.

“‘Let’s go and hear what he’s saying,’ I said.

“I could see they were arguing. It looked exciting. I wanted to know what was happening.

“‘Come along, Delilah,’ he said. ‘Let us mind our own business.’

“‘You go back to the hotel and do your packing. I’m going to see the fun,’ I said.

“I ran down the street and he followed me. There were about two or three hundred people there and a student was addressing them. There were some working-men and they were shouting at him. I love a row and I edged my way into the crowd. Suddenly we heard the sound of shots and before you could realize what was happening two armoured cars came dashing down the street. There were soldiers in them and they were firing as they went. I don’t know why. For fun, I suppose, or because they were drunk. We all scattered like a lot of rabbits. We just ran for our lives. I lost Mr Harrington. I can’t make out why he isn’t here. Do you think something has happened to him?” Ashenden was silent for a while.

“We’d better go out and look for him,” he said. “I don’t know why the devil he couldn’t leave his washing.”

“I understand, I understand so well.”

“That’s a comfort,” said Ashenden irritably. “Let’s go.”

He put on his hat and coat, and they walked downstairs. The hotel seemed strangely empty. They went out into the street. There was hardly anyone to be seen. They walked along. The trams were not running and the silence in the great city was uncanny. The shops were closed. It was quite startling when a motor-car dashed by at breakneck speed. The people they passed looked frightened and downcast. When they had to go through a main thoroughfare they hastened their steps. A lot of people were there and they stood about irresolutely as though they did not know what to do next. Reservists in their shabby grey were walking down the middle of the roadway in little bunches. They did not speak. They looked like sheep looking for their shepherd. Then they came to the street down which Anastasia Alexandrovna had run, but they entered it from the opposite end. A number of windows had been broken by the wild shooting. It was quite empty. You could see where the people had scattered, for strewn about were articles they had dropped in their haste, books, a man’s hat, a lady’s bag, and a basket. Anastasia Alexandrovna touched Ashenden’s arm to draw his attention: sitting on the pavement, her head bent right down to her lap, was a woman and she was dead. A little way on two men had fallen together. They were dead too. The wounded, one supposed, had managed to drag themselves away or their friends had carried them. Then they found Mr Harrington. His derby had rolled in the gutter. He lay on his face, in a pool of blood, his bald head, with its prominent bones, very white; his neat black coat smeared and muddy. But his hand was clenched tight on the parcel that contained four shirts, two union suits, a pair of pyjamas, and four collars. Mr Harrington had not let his washing go.

THE HUMAN ELEMENT

I SEEM never to find myself in Rome but at the dead season. I pass through in August or September on my way somewhere or other and spend a couple of days revisiting places or pictures that are endeared to me by old associations. It is very hot then and the inhabitants of the city spend their day interminably strolling up and down the Corso. The Caffé Nazionale is crowded with people sitting at little tables for long hours with an empty cup of coffee in front of them and a glass of water. In the Sistine Chapel you see blond and sunburned Germans, in knickerbockers and shirts open at the neck, who have walked down the dusty roads of Italy with knapsacks on their shoulders; and in St Peter’s little groups of the pious, tired but eager, who have come on pilgrimage (at an inclusive rate) from some distant country. They are under the charge of a priest and they speak strange tongues. The Hotel Plaza then is cool and restful. The public rooms are dark, silent and spacious. In the lounge at tea-time the only persons are a young, smart officer and a woman with fine eyes, drinking iced lemonade, and they talk intimately, in low tones, with the unwearying fluency of their race. You go up to your room and read and write letters and come down again two hours later and they are still talking. Before dinner a few people saunter into the bar, but for the rest of the day it is empty and the barman has time to tell you of his mother in Switzerland and his experiences in New York. You discuss life and love and the high cost of liquor.

And on this occasion too I found that I had the hotel almost to myself. When the reception clerk took me to my room he told me that they were pretty full, but when, having bathed and changed, I came down again to the hall, the liftman, an old acquaintance, informed me that there were not more than a dozen people staying there. I was tired after a long and hot journey down Italy and had made up my mind to dine quietly in the hotel and go to bed early.

It was late when I went into the dining-room, vast and brightly lit, but not more than three or four tables were occupied. I looked round me with satisfaction. It is very agreeable to find yourself alone in a great city which is yet not quite strange to you and in a large empty hotel. It gives you a delectable sense of freedom. I felt the wings of my spirit give a little flutter of delight. I had paused for ten minutes in the bar and had a dry Martini. I ordered myself a bottle of good red wine. My limbs were weary, but my soul responded wonderfully to food and drink and I began to feel a singular lightness of heart. I ate my soup and my fish and pleasant thoughts filled my mind. Scraps of dialogue occurred to me and my fancy played happily with the persons of a novel I was then at work on. I rolled a phrase on my tongue and it tasted better than the wine. I began to think of the difficulty of describing the looks of people in such a way as to make the reader see them as you see them. To me it has always been one of the most difficult things in fiction. What does the reader really get when you describe a face feature by feature? I should think nothing. And yet the plan some writers adopt of taking a salient characteristic, a crooked smile or shifty eyes, and emphasizing that, though effective, avoids rather than solves the problem. I looked about me and wondered how I would describe the people at the tables round me. There was one man by himself just opposite and for practice I asked myself in what way I should treat him. He was a tall, spare fellow, and what I believe is generally called loose-limbed. He wore a dinner jacket and a boiled shirt. He had a rather long face and pale eyes; his hair was fairish and wavy, but it was growing thin, and the baldness of his temples gave him a certain nobility of brow. His features were undistinguished. His mouth and nose were like everybody else’s; he was clean-shaven; his skin was naturally pale, but at the moment sunburned. His appearance suggested an intellectual but slightly commonplace distinction. He looked as though he might have been a lawyer or a don who played a pretty game of golf. I felt that he had good taste and was well-read and would be a very agreeable guest at a luncheon-party in Chelsea. But how the devil one was to describe him so as in a few lines to give a vivid, interesting, and accurate picture I could not imagine. Perhaps it would be better to let all the rest go and dwell only on that rather fatigued distinction which on the whole was the most definite impression he gave. I looked at him reflectively. Suddenly he leaned forwards and gave me a stiff but courtly little bow. I have a ridiculous habit of flushing when I am taken aback and now I felt my cheeks redden. I was startled. I had been staring at him for several minutes as though he were a dummy. He must have thought me extremely rude. I nodded with a good deal of embarrassment and looked away. Fortunately at that moment the waiter was handing me a dish. To the best of my belief I had never seen the fellow before. I asked myself whether his bow was due to my insistent stare, which made him think that he had met me somewhere, or whether I had really run across him and completely forgotten. I have a bad memory for faces and I had in this case the excuse that he looked exactly like a great many other people. You saw a dozen of him at every golf course round London on a fine Sunday.

He finished his dinner before me. He got up, but on his way out stopped at my table. He stretched out his hand.

“How d’you do?” he said. “I didn’t recognize you when you first came in. I wasn’t meaning to cut you.”

He spoke in a pleasant voice with the tones cultivated at Oxford and copied by many who have never been there. It was evident that he knew me and evident too that he had no notion that I did not also know him. I had risen and since he was a good deal taller than I he looked down on me. He held himself with a sort of languor. He stooped a little, which added to the impression he gave me of having about him an air that was vaguely apologetic. His manner was a trifle condescending and at the same time a trifle shy.

“Won’t you come and have your coffee with me?” he said. “I’m quite alone.”

“Yes, I shall be glad to.”

He left me and I still had no notion who he was or where I had met him. I had noticed one curious thing about him. Not once during the few sentences we exchanged, when we shook hands, or when with a nod he left me, did even the suspicion of a smile cross his face. Seeing him more closely I observed that he was in his way good-looking; his features were regular, his grey eyes were handsome, he had a slim figure; but it was a way that I found uninteresting. A silly woman would say he looked romantic. He reminded you of one of the knights of Burne-Jones though he was on a larger scale and there was no suggestion that he suffered from the chronic colitis that afflicted those unfortunate creatures. He was the sort of man whom you expected to look wonderful in fancy dress till you saw him in it and then you found that he looked absurd.

Presently I finished my dinner and went into the lounge. He was sitting in a large arm-chair and when he saw me he called a waiter. I sat down. The waiter came up and he ordered coffee and liqueurs. He spoke Italian very well. I was wondering by what means I could find out who he was without offending him. People are always a little disconcerted when you do not recognize them, they are so important to themselves, it is a shock to discover of what small importance they are to others. The excellence of his Italian recalled him to me. I remembered who he was and remembered at the same time that I did not like him. His name was Humphrey Carruthers. He was in the Foreign Office and he had a position of some importance. He was in charge of I know not what department. He had been attached to various embassies and I supposed that a sojourn in Rome accounted for his idiomatic Italian. It was stupid of me not to have seen at once that he was connected with the diplomatic service. He had all the marks of the profession. He had the supercilious courtesy that is so well calculated to put up the backs of the general public and the aloofness due to the consciousness the diplomat has that he is not as other men are, joined with the shyness occasioned by his uneasy feeling that other men do not quite realize it. I had known Carruthers for a good many years, but had met him infrequently, at luncheon-parties where I said no more than how do you do to him and at the opera where he gave me a cool nod. He was generally thought intelligent; he was certainly cultured. He could talk of all the right things. It was inexcusable of me not to have remembered him, for he had lately acquired a very considerable reputation as a writer of short stories. They had appeared first in one or other of those magazines that are founded now and then by well-disposed persons to give the intelligent reader something worthy of his attention and that die when their proprietors have lost as much money as they want to; and in their discreet and handsomely printed pages had excited as much attention as an exiguous circulation permitted. Then they were published in book form. They created a sensation. I have seldom read such unanimous praise in the weekly papers. Most of them gave the book a column and the Literary Supplement of The Times reviewed it not among the common ruck of novels but in a place by itself cheek by jowl with the memoirs of a distinguished statesman. The critics welcomed Humphrey Carruthers as a new star in the firmament. They praised his distinction, his subtlety, his delicate irony, and his insight. They praised his style, his sense of beauty, and his atmosphere. Here at last was a writer who had raised the short story from the depths into which in English-speaking countries it had fallen and here was work to which an Englishman could point with pride; it bore comparison with the best compositions in this manner of Finland, Russia, and Czecho-Slovakia.

Three years later Humphrey Carruthers brought out his second book and the critics commented on the interval with satisfaction. Here was no hack prostituting his talent for money! The praise it received was perhaps a little cooler than that which welcomed his first volume, the critics had had time to collect themselves, but it was enthusiastic enough to have delighted any common writer who earns his living by his pen and there was no doubt that his position in the world of letters was secure and honourable. The story that attracted most commendation was called The Shaving Mop and all the best critics pointed out with what beauty the author in three or four pages had laid bare the tragic soul of a barber’s assistant.

But his best-known story, which was also his longest, was called Week End. It gave its title to his first book. It narrated the adventures of a number of people who left Paddington Station on Saturday afternoon to stay with friends at Taplow and on Monday morning returned to London. It was so delicate that it was a little difficult to know exactly what happened. A young man, parliamentary secretary to a Cabinet Minister, very nearly proposed to a baronet’s daughter, but didn’t. Two or three others went on the river in a punt. They all talked a great deal in an allusive way, but none of them ever finished a sentence and what they meant was very subtly indicated by dots and dashes. There were a good many descriptions of flowers in the garden and a sensitive picture of the Thames under the rain. It was all seen through the eyes of the German governess and everyone agreed that Carruthers had conveyed her outlook on the situation with quite delicious humour.

I read both Humphrey Carruthers’s books. I think it part of the writer’s business to make himself aware of what is being written by his contemporaries. I am very willing to learn and I thought I might discover in them something that would be useful to me. I was disappointed. I like a story to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I have a weakness for a point. I think atmosphere is all very well, but atmosphere without anything else is like a frame without a picture; it has not much significance. But it may be that I could not see the merit of Humphrey Carruthers on account of defects in myself, and if I have described his two most successful stories without enthusiasm the cause perhaps lies in my own wounded vanity. For I was perfectly conscious that Humphrey Carruthers looked upon me as a writer of no account. I am convinced that he had never read a word I had written. The popularity I enjoyed was sufficient to persuade him that there was no occasion for him to give me any of his attention. For a moment, such was the stir he created, it looked as though he might himself be faced with that ignominy, but it soon appeared that his exquisite work was above the heads of the public. One can never tell how large the intelligentsia is, but one can tell fairly well how many of its members are prepared to pay money to patronize the arts they cherish. The plays that are of too fine a quality to attract the patrons of the commercial theatre can count on an audience of ten thousand, and the books that demand from their readers more comprehension than can be expected from the common herd sell twelve hundred copies. For the intelligentsia, notwithstanding their sensitiveness to beauty, prefer to go to the theatre on the nod and to get a book from the library.

I am sure this did not distress Carruthers. He was an artist. He was also a clerk in the Foreign Office. His reputation as a writer was distinguished; he was not interested in the vulgar, and to sell well would possibly have damaged his career. I could not surmise what had induced him to invite me to have coffee with him. It is true he was alone, but I should have supposed he found his thoughts excellent company, and I could not believe he imagined that I had anything to say that would interest him. Nevertheless I could not but see that he was doing his dreary best to be affable. He reminded me of where we had last met and we talked for a moment of common friends in London. He asked me how I came to be in Rome at this season and I told him. He volunteered the information that he had arrived that morning from Brindisi. Our conversation did not go easily and I made up my mind that as soon as I civilly could I would get up and leave him. But presently I had an odd sensation, I hardly know what caused it, that he was conscious of this and was desperately anxious not to give me the opportunity. I was surprised. I gathered my wits about me. I noticed that whenever I paused he broke in with a new topic. He was trying to find something to interest me so that I should stay. He was straining every nerve to be agreeable. Surely he could not be lonely; with his diplomatic connexions he must know plenty of people with whom he could have spent the evening. I wondered indeed that he was not dining at the Embassy; even though it was summer there must be someone there he knew. I noticed also that he never smiled. He talked with a sort of harsh eagerness as though he were afraid of a moment’s silence and the sound of his voice shut out of his mind something that tortured him. It was very strange. Though I did not like him, though he meant nothing to me and to be with him irked me somewhat, I was against my will a trifle interested. I gave him a searching glance. I wondered if it was my fancy that I saw in those pale eyes of his the cowed look of a hunted dog and, notwithstanding his neat features and his expression so civilly controlled, in his aspect something that suggested the grimace of a soul in pain. I could not understand. A dozen absurd notions flashed through my mind. I was not particularly sympathetic: like an old war horse scenting the fray I roused myself. I had been feeling very tired, but now I grew alert. My sensibilities put out tentacles. I was suddenly alive to every expression of his face and every gesture. I put aside the thought that had come to me that he had written a play and wanted my advice. These exquisite persons succumb strangely to the glamour of the footlights and they are not averse from getting a few tips from the craftsman whose competence they superciliously despise. No, it was not that. A single man in Rome, of aesthetic leanings, is liable to get into trouble, and I asked myself whether Carruthers had got into some difficulty to extricate himself from which the Embassy was the last place he could go to. The idealist, I have noticed, is apt at times to be imprudent in the affairs of the flesh. He sometimes finds love in places which the police inconveniently visit. I tittered in my heart. Even the gods laugh when a prig is caught in an equivocal situation.

Suddenly Carruthers said something that staggered me.

“I’m so desperately unhappy,” he muttered.

He said it without warning. He obviously meant it. There was in his tone a sort of gasp. It might very well have been a sob. I cannot describe what a shock it was to me to hear him say those words. I felt as you do when you turn a corner of the street and on a sudden a great blast of wind meets you, takes your breath away, and nearly blows you off your feet. It was so unexpected. After all

I hardly knew the fellow. We were not friends. I did not like him; he did not like me. I have never looked on him as quite human. It was amazing that a man so self-controlled, so urbane, accustomed to the usages of polite society, should break in upon a stranger with such a confession. I am naturally reticent. I should be ashamed, whatever I was suffering, to disclose my pain to another. I shivered. His weakness outraged me. For a moment I was filled with a passion of anger. How dared he thrust the anguish of his soul on me? I very nearly cried:

“What the hell do I care?”

But I didn’t. He was sitting huddled up in the big arm-chair. The solemn nobility of his features, which reminded one of the marble statue of a Victorian statesman, had strangely crumpled and his face sagged. He looked almost as though he were going to cry. I hesitated. I faltered. I had flushed when he spoke and now I felt my face go white. He was a pitiable object.

“I’m awfully sorry,” I said.

“Do you mind if I tell you about it?”

“No.”

It was not the moment for many words. I suppose Carruthers was in the early forties. He was a well-made man, athletic in his way, and with a confident bearing. Now he looked twenty years older and strangely shrivelled. He reminded me of the dead soldiers I had seen during the war and how oddly small death had made them. I was embarrassed and looked away, but I felt his eyes claiming mine and I looked back.

“Do you know Betty Welldon-Burns?” he asked me.

“I used to meet her sometimes in London years ago. I’ve not seen her lately.”

“She lives in Rhodes now, you know. I’ve just come from there. I’ve been staying with her.”

“Oh?”

He hesitated.

“I’m afraid you’ll think it awfully strange of me to talk to you like this. I’m at the end of my tether. If I don’t talk to somebody I shall go off my head.”

He had ordered double brandies with the coffee and now calling the waiter he ordered himself another. We were alone in the lounge. There was a little shaded lamp on the table between us. Because it was a public room he spoke in a low voice. The place gave one oddly enough a sense of intimacy. I cannot repeat all that Carruthers said to me in the words he said it; it would be impossible for me to remember them; it is more convenient for me to put it in my own fashion. Sometimes he could not bring himself to say a thing right out and I had to guess at what he meant. Sometimes he had not understood, and it seemed to me that in certain ways I saw the truth more clearly than he. Betty Welldon-Burns had a very keen sense of humour and he had none. I perceived a good deal that had escaped him.

I had met her a good many times, but I knew her chiefly from hearsay. In her day she had made a great stir in the little world of London and I had heard of her often before I met her. This was at a dance in Portland Place soon after the war. She was then already at the height of her celebrity. You could not open an illustrated paper without seeing in it a portrait of her, and her mad pranks were a staple of conversation. She was twenty-four. Her mother was dead, her father, the Duke of St Erth, old and none too rich, spent most of the year in his Cornish castle and she lived in London with a widowed aunt. At the outbreak of the war she went to France. She was just eighteen. She was a nurse in a hospital at the Base and then drove a car. She acted in a theatrical tour designed to amuse the troops; she posed in tableaux at home for charitable purposes, held auctions for this object and that, and sold flags in Piccadilly. Every one of her activities was widely advertised and in every new role she was profusely photographed. I suppose that she managed to have a very good time. But now that the war was over she was having her fling with a vengeance. Just then everybody a little lost his head. The young, relieved of the burden that for five years had oppressed them, indulged in one wild escapade after another. Betty took part in them all. Sometimes, for one reason or another, an account of them found its way into the newspapers and her name was always in the headlines. At that time night clubs were in the first flush of their success and she was to be seen at them every night. She lived a life of hectic gaiety. It can only be described in a hackneyed phrase, because it was a hackneyed thing. The British public in its odd way took her to its heart and Lady Betty was a sufficient description of her throughout the British islands. Women mobbed her when she went to a wedding and the gallery applauded her at first nights as though she were a popular actress. Girls copied the way she did her hair and manufacturers of soap and face cream paid her money to use her photograph to advertise their wares.

Of course dull, stodgy people, the people who remembered and regretted the old order, disapproved of her. They sneered at her constant appearance in the limelight. They said she had an insane passion for self-advertisement. They said she was fast. They said she drank too much. They said she smoked too much. I will admit that nothing I had heard of her had predisposed me to think very well of her. I held cheap the women who seemed to look upon the war as an occasion to enjoy themselves and be talked about. I am bored by the papers in which you see photographs of persons in society walking in Cannes or playing golf at St Andrews. I have always found the Bright Young People extremely tedious. The gay life seems dull and stupid to the onlooker, but the moralist is unwise to judge it harshly. It is as absurd to be angry with the young things who lead it as with a litter of puppies scampering aimlessly around, rolling one another over and chasing their tails. It is well to bear it with fortitude if they cause havoc in the flower beds or break a piece of china. Some of them will be drowned because their points are not up to the mark and the rest will grow up into well-behaved dogs. Their unruliness is due only to the vitality of youth.

And it was vitality that was Betty’s most shining characteristic. The urge of life flowed through her with a radiance that dazzled you. I do not think I shall ever forget the impression she made on me at the party at which I first saw her. She was like a maenad. She danced with an abandon that made you laugh, so obvious was her intense enjoyment of the music and the movement of her young limbs. Her hair was brown, slightly disordered by the vigour of her gestures, but her eyes were deep blue, and her skin was milk and roses. She was a great beauty, but she had none of the coldness of great beauty. She laughed constantly and when she was not laughing she smiled and her eyes danced with the joy of living. She was like a milkmaid on the farmstead of the gods. She had the strength and health of the people; and yet the independence of her bearing, a sort of noble frankness of carriage, suggested the great lady. I do not quite know how to put the feeling she gave me, that though so simple and unaffected she was not unconscious of her station. I fancied that if occasion arose she could get on her dignity and be very grand indeed. She was charming to everybody because, probably without being quite aware of it, in the depths of her heart she felt that the rest of the world was perfectly insignificant. I understood why the factory girls in the East End adored her and why half a million people who had never seen her except in a photograph looked upon her with the intimacy of personal friendship. I was introduced to her and she spent a few minutes talking to me. It was extraordinarily flattering to see the interest she showed in you; you knew she could not really be so pleased to meet you as she seemed or so delighted with what you said, but it was very attractive. She had the gift of being able to jump over the first difficult phases of acquaintance and you had not known her for five minutes before you felt you had known her all her life. She was snatched away from me by someone who wanted to dance with her and she surrendered herself to her partner’s arms with just the same eager happiness as she had shown when she sank into a chair by my side. I was surprised when I met her at luncheon a fortnight later to find that she remembered exactly what we had talked about during those noisy ten minutes at the dance. A young woman with all the social graces.

I mentioned the incident to Carruthers.

“She was no fool,” he said. “Very few people knew how intelligent she was. She wrote some very good poetry. Because she was so gay, because she was so reckless and never cared a damn for anybody, people thought she was scatterbrained. Far from it. She was as clever as a monkey. You would never have thought she’d had the time to read all the things she had. I don’t suppose anyone knew that side of her as well as I did. We used to take walks together, in the country at week-ends, and in London we’d drive out to Richmond Park and walk there, and talk. She loved flowers and trees and grass. She was interested in everything. She had a lot of information and a lot of sense. There was nothing she couldn’t talk about. Sometimes when we’d been for a walk in the afternoon and we met at a night club and she’d had a couple of glasses of champagne, that was enough to make her completely buffy, you know, and she was the life and soul of the party, I couldn’t help thinking how amazed the rest of them would be if they knew how seriously we’d been talking only a few hours before. It was an extraordinary contrast. There seemed to be two entirely different women in her.”

Carruthers said all this without a smile. He spoke with the melancholy he might have used if he had been speaking of some person snatched from the pleasant company of the living by untimely death. He gave a deep sigh.

“I was madly in love with her. I proposed to her half a dozen times. Of course I knew I hadn’t a chance. I was only a very junior clerk at the F.O., but I couldn’t help myself. She refused me, but she was always frightfully nice about it. It never made any difference to our friendship. You see, she really liked me. I gave her something that other people didn’t. I always thought that she was really fonder of me than of anybody. I was crazy about her.”

“I don’t suppose you were the only one,” I said, having to say something.

“Far from it. She used to get dozens of love letters from men she’d never seen or heard of, farmers in Africa, miners, and policemen in Canada. All sorts of people proposed to her. She could have married anyone she liked.”

“Even royalty, one heard.”

“Yes, she said she couldn’t stand the life. And then she married Jimmie Welldon-Burns.”

“People were rather surprised, weren’t they?”

“Did you ever know him?”

“No, I don’t think so. I may have met him, but he left no impression on me.”

“He wouldn’t. He was the most insignificant fellow that ever breathed. His father was a big manufacturer up in the North. He’d made a lot of money during the war and bought a baronetcy. I believe he hadn’t an aitch to his name. Jimmy was at Eton with me, they’d tried hard to make a gentleman of him, and in London after the war he was about a good deal. He was always willing to throw a party. No one ever paid any attention to him. He just paid the bill. He was the most crashing bore. You know, rather prim, terribly polite; he made you rather uncomfortable because he was so anxious not to do the wrong thing. He always wore his clothes as though he’d just put them on for the first time and they were a little too tight for him.”

When Carruthers innocently opened his Times one morning and casting his eyes down the fashionable intelligence of the day saw that a marriage had been arranged between Elizabeth, only daughter of the Duke of St Erth, and James, eldest son of Sir John Welldon-Burns, Bart, he was dumbfounded. He rang Betty up and asked if it was true.

“Of course,” she said.

He was so shocked that for the moment he found nothing to say. She went on speaking.

“He’s bringing his family to luncheon today to meet father. I dare say it’ll be a bit grim. You might stand me a cocktail at Claridge’s to fortify me, will you?”

“At what time?” he asked.

“One.”

“All right. I’ll meet you there.”

He was waiting for her when she came in. She walked with a sort of spring as though her eager feet itched to break into a dance. She was smiling. Her eyes shone with the joy that suffused her because she was alive and the world was such a pleasant place to live in. People recognizing her whispered to one another as she came in. Carruthers really felt that she brought sunshine and the scent of flowers into the sober but rather overwhelming splendour of Claridge’s lounge. He did not wait to say how do you do to her.

“Betty, you can’t do it,” he said. “It’s simply out of the question.”

“Why?”

“He’s awful.”

“I don’t think he is. I think he’s rather nice.”

A waiter came up and took their order. Betty looked at Carruthers with those beautiful blue eyes of hers that managed to be at the same time so gay and so tender.

“He’s such a frightful bounder, Betty.”

“Oh, don’t be so silly, Humphrey. He’s just as good as anybody else. I think you’re rather a snob.”

“He’s so dull.”

“No, he’s rather quiet. I don’t know that I want a husband who’s too brilliant. I think he’ll make a very good background. He’s quite good-looking and he has nice manners.”

“My God, Betty.”

“Oh, don’t be idiotic, Humphrey.”

“Are you going to pretend you’re in love with him?”

“I think it would be tactful, don’t you?”

“Why are you going to marry him?”

She looked at him coolly.

“He’s got pots of money. I’m nearly twenty-six.”

There was nothing much more to be said. He drove her back to her aunt’s house. She had a very grand marriage, with dense crowds lining the approach to St Margaret’s, Westminster, presents from practically all the royal family, and the honeymoon was passed on the yacht her father-in-law had lent them. Carruthers applied for a post abroad and was sent to Rome (I was right in guessing that he had thus acquired his admirable Italian) and later to Stockholm. Here he was counsellor and here he wrote the first of his stories.

Perhaps Betty’s marriage had disappointed the British public who expected much greater things of her, perhaps only that as a young married woman she no longer appealed to the popular sense of romance; the fact was plain that she soon lost her place in the public eye. You ceased to hear very much about her. Not long after the marriage it was rumoured that she was going to have a baby and a little later that she had had a miscarriage. She did not drop out of society, I suppose she continued to see her friends, but her activities were no longer spectacular. She was certainly but seldom seen any more in those raffish assemblies where the members of a tarnished aristocracy hob-nob with the hangers-on of the arts and flatter themselves that they are being at once smart and cultured. People said she was settling down. They wondered how she was getting on with her husband and no sooner did they do this than they concluded that she was not getting on very well. Presently gossip said that Jimmie was drinking too much and then, a year or two later, one heard that he had contracted tuberculosis. The Welldon-Burnses spent a couple of winters in Switzerland. Then the news spread that they had separated and Betty had gone to live in Rhodes. An odd place to choose.

“It must be deadly,” her friends said.

A few of them went to stay with her now and then and came back with reports of the beauty of the island and the leisurely charm of the life. But of course it was very lonely. It seemed strange that Betty, with her brilliance and her energy, should be content to settle there. She had bought a house. She knew no one but a few Italian officials, there was indeed no one to know; but she seemed perfectly happy. Her visitors could not make it out. But the life of London is busy and memories are short. People ceased to concern themselves with her. She was forgotten. Then, a few weeks before I met Humphrey Carruthers in Rome, The Times announced the death of Sir James Welldon-Burns, second baronet. His younger brother succeeded him in the title. Betty had never had a child.

Carruthers continued to see her after the marriage. Whenever he came to London they lunched together. She had the ability to take up a friendship after a long separation as though no passage of time had intervened, so that there was never any strangeness in their meetings. Sometimes she asked him when he was going to marry.

“You’re getting on, you know, Humphrey. If you don’t marry soon you’ll get rather old-maidish.”

“D’you recommend marriage?”

It was not a very kindly thing to say, because like everyone else he had heard that she was not getting on too well with her husband, but her remark piqued him.

“On the whole. I think probably an unsatisfactory marriage is better than no marriage at all.”

“You know quite well that nothing would induce me to marry and you know why.”

“Oh, my dear, you’re not going to pretend that you’re still in love with me?”

“I am.”

“You are a damned fool.”

“I don’t care.”

She smiled at him. Her eyes always had that look, partly bantering, partly tender, that gave him such a happy pain in his heart. Funny, he could almost localize it.

“You’re rather sweet, Humphrey. You know I’m devoted to you, but I wouldn’t marry you even if I were free.”

When she left her husband and went to live in Rhodes Carruthers ceased to see her. She never came to England. They maintained an active correspondence.

He suggested coming to Rhodes for a few days, but she thought he had better not. He understood why. Everyone knew he had been madly in love with her. Everyone knew he was still. He did not know in what circumstances exactly the Welldon-Burnses had separated. It might be that there had been a good deal of bad feeling. Betty might think that his presence on the island would compromise her.

“She wrote a charming letter to me when my first book came out. You know I dedicated it to her. She was surprised that I had done anything so good. Everyone was very nice about it, and she was delighted with that. I think her pleasure was the chief thing that pleased me. After all I’m not a professional writer, you know: I don’t attach much importance to literary success.”

Fool, I thought, and liar. Did he think I had not noticed the self-satisfaction that consumed him on account of the favourable reception of his books? I did not blame him for feeling that, nothing could be more pardonable, but why be at such pains to deny it. But it was doubtless true that it was mostly for Betty’s sake that he relished the notoriety they had brought him. He had a positive achievement to offer her. He could lay at her feet now not only his love, but a distinguished reputation. Betty was not very young any more, she was thirty-six; her marriage, her sojourn abroad, had changed things; she was no longer surrounded by suitors; she had lost the halo with which the public admiration had surrounded her. The distance between them was no longer insuperable. He alone had remained faithful through the years. It was absurd that she should continue to bury her beauty, her wit, her social grace in an island in the corner of the Mediterranean. He knew she was fond of him. She could hardly fail to be touched by his long devotion. And the life he had to offer her now was one that he knew would appeal to her. He made up his mind to ask her once more to marry him. He was able to get away towards the end of July. He wrote and said that he was going to spend his leave in the Greek islands and if she would be glad to see him he would stop off at Rhodes for a day or two where he had heard the Italians had opened a very good hotel. He put his suggestion in this casual way out of delicacy. His training at the Foreign Office had taught him to eschew abruptness. He never willingly put himself in a position from which he could not if necessary withdraw with tact. Betty sent him a telegram in reply. She said it was too marvellous that he was coming to Rhodes and of course he must come and stay with her, for at least a fortnight, and he was to wire what boat he was coming by.

He was in a state of wild excitement when at last the ship he had taken at Brindisi steamed, soon after sunrise, into the neat and pretty harbour of Rhodes. He had hardly slept a wink all night and getting up early had watched the island loom grandly out of the dawn and the sun rise over the summer sea. Boats came out as the ship dropped her anchor. The gangway was lowered. Humphrey, leaning over the rail, watched the doctor and the port officials and the hotel couriers swarm up it. He was the only Englishman on board. His nationality was obvious. A man came on deck and immediately walked up to him.

“Are you Mr Carruthers?”

“Yes.”

He was about to smile and put out his hand, but he perceived in the twinkling of an eye that the person who addressed him, an Englishman like himself, was not a gentleman. Instinctively his manner, remaining exceedingly polite, became a trifle stiff. Of course Carruthers did not tell me this, but I see the scene so clearly that I have no hesitation in describing it.

“Her ladyship hopes you don’t mind her not coming to meet you, but the boat got in so early and it’s more than an hour’s drive to where we live.”

“Oh, of course. Her ladyship well?”

“Yes, thank you. Got your luggage ready?”

“Yes.”

“If you’ll show me where it is I’ll tell one of these fellows to put it in a boat. You won’t have any difficulty at the Customs. I’ve fixed that up all right, and then we’ll get off. Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The man was not quite sure of his aitches. Carruthers wondered who he was. You could not say he was uncivil, but he was certainly a little offhand. Carruthers knew that Betty had rather a large estate; perhaps he was her agent. He seemed very competent. He gave the porters instructions in fluent Greek and when they got in the boat and the boatmen asked for more money than he gave them, he said something that made them laugh and they shrugged their shoulders satisfied. The luggage was passed through the Customs without examination, Humphrey’s guide shaking hands with the officials, and they went into a sunny place where a large yellow car was standing.

“Are you going to drive me?” asked Carruthers.

“I’m her ladyship’s chauffeur.”

“Oh, I see. I didn’t know.”

He was not dressed like a chauffeur. He wore white duck trousers and espadrilles on his bare feet, a white tennis shirt, with no tie and open at the neck, and a straw hat. Carruthers frowned. Betty oughtn’t to let her chauffeur drive the car like that. It was true that he had had to get up before daybreak and it looked like being a hot drive up to the villa. Perhaps under ordinary conditions he wore uniform. Though not so tall as Carruthers, who was six feet one in his socks, he was not short; but he was broad-shouldered and squarely built, so that he looked stocky. He was not fat, but plump rather; he looked as though he had a hearty appetite and ate well. Young still, thirty perhaps or thirty-one, he had already a massive look and one day would be very beefy. Now he was a hefty fellow. He had a broad face deeply sun-burned, a short thickish nose, and a somewhat sullen look. He wore a short fair moustache. Oddly enough Carruthers had a vague feeling that he had seen him before.

“Have you been with her ladyship long?” he asked.

“Well, I have, in a manner of speaking.”

Carruthers became a trifle stiffer. He did not quite like the manner in which the chauffeur spoke. He wondered why he did not say “sir’ to him. He was afraid Betty had let him get a little above himself. It was like her to be a bit careless about such things. But it was a mistake. He’d give her a hint when he got a chance. Their eyes met for an instant and he could have sworn that there was a twinkle of amusement in the chauffeur’s. Carruthers could not imagine why. He was not aware that there was anything amusing in him.

“That, I suppose, is the old city of the Knights,” he said distantly, pointing to the battlemented walls.

“Yes. Her ladyship’ll take you over. We get a rare lot of tourists here in the season.”

Carruthers wished to be affable. He thought it would be nicer of him to offer to sit by the chauffeur rather than behind by himself and was just going to suggest it when the matter was taken out of his hands. The chauffeur told the porters to put Carruthers’ bags at the back, and settling himself at the wheel said:

“Now if you’ll hop in we’ll get along.”

Carruthers sat down beside him and they set off along a white road that ran by the sea. In a few minutes they were in the open country. They drove in silence. Carruthers was a little on his dignity. He felt that the chauffeur was inclined to be familiar and he did not wish to give him occasion to be so. He nattered himself that he had a manner with him that puts his inferiors in their place. He thought with sardonic grimness that it would not be long before the chauffeur would be calling him “sir’. But the morning was lovely; the white road ran between olive groves and the farmhouses they passed now and then, with their white walls and flat roofs, had an Oriental look that took the fancy. And Betty was waiting for him. The love in his heart disposed him to kindliness towards all men and lighting himself a cigarette he thought it would be a generous act to offer the chauffeur one too. After all, Rhodes was very far away from England and the age was democratic. The chauffeur accepted the gift and stopped the car to light up.

“Have you got the baccy?” he asked suddenly.

“Have I got what?”

The chauffeur’s face fell.

“Her ladyship wired to you to bring two pounds of Player’s Navy Cut. That’s why I fixed it up with the Customs people not to open your luggage.”

“I never got the wire.”

“Damn!”

“What on earth does her ladyship want with two pounds of Player’s Navy Cut?”

He spoke with hauteur. He did not like the chauffeur’s exclamation. The fellow gave him a sidelong glance in which Carruthers read a certain insolence.

“We can’t get it here,” he said briefly.

He threw away with what looked very like exasperation the Egyptian cigarette Carruthers had given him and started off again. He looked sulky. He said nothing more. Carruthers felt that his efforts at sociability had been a mistake. For the rest of the journey he ignored the chauffeur. He adopted the frigid manner that he had used so successfully as secretary at the Embassy when a member of the British public came to him for assistance. For some time they had been running up hill and now they came to a long low wall and then to an open gate. The chauffeur turned in.

“Have we arrived?” cried Carruthers.

“Sixty-five kilometres in fifty-seven minutes,” said the chauffeur, a smile suddenly showing his fine white teeth. “Not so bad considering the road.”

He sounded his klaxon shrilly. Carruthers was breathless with excitement. They drove up a narrow road through an olive grove, and came to a low, white, rambling house. Betty was standing at the door. He jumped out of the car and kissed her on both cheeks. For a moment he could not speak. But subconsciously he noticed that at the door stood an elderly butler in white ducks and a couple of footmen in the fustanellas of their country. They were smart and picturesque. Whatever Betty permitted her chauffeur it was evident that the house was run in the civilized style suited to her station. She led him through the hall, a large apartment with whitewashed walls in which he was vaguely conscious of handsome furniture, into the drawing-room. This was also large and low, with the same whitewashed walls, and he had immediately an impression of comfort and luxury.

“The first thing you must do is to come and look at my view,” she said.

“The first thing I must do is to look at you.”

She was dressed in white. Her arms, her face, her neck, were deeply burned by the sun; her eyes were bluer than he had ever seen them and the whiteness of her teeth was startling. She looked extremely well. She was very trim and neat. Her hair was waved, her nails were manicured; he had had a moment’s anxiety that in the easy life she led on this romantic isle she had let herself go.

“Upon my word you look eighteen, Betty. How do you manage it?”

“Happiness,” she smiled.

It gave him a momentary pang to hear her say this. He did not want her to be too happy. He wanted to give her happiness. But now she insisted on taking him out on the terrace. The drawing-room had five long windows that led out to it and from the terrace the olive-clad hill tumbled steeply to the sea. There was a tiny bay below in which a white boat, mirrored on the calm water, lay at anchor. On a further hill, round the corner, you saw the white houses of a Greek village and beyond it a huge grey crag surmounted by the battlements of a medieval castle.

“It was one of the strongholds of the Knights,” she said. “I’ll take you up there this evening.”

The scene was quite lovely. It took your breath away. It was peaceful and yet it had a strange air of life. It moved you not to contemplation, but stirred you to activity.

“You’ve got the tobacco all right, I suppose.” He started.

“I’m afraid I haven’t. I never got your wire.”

“But I wired to the Embassy and I wired to the Excelsior.”

“I stayed at the Plaza.”

“What a bore! Albert’ll be furious.”

“Who is Albert?”

“He drove you out. Player’s is the only tobacco he likes and he can’t get it here.”

“Oh, the chauffeur.” He pointed to the boat that lay gleaming beneath them. “Is that the yacht I’ve heard about?”

“Yes.”

It was a large caïque that Betty had bought, fitted with a motor auxiliary and smartened up. In it she wandered about the Greek islands. She had been as far north as Athens and as far south as Alexandria.

“We’ll take you for a trip if you can spare the time,” she said. “You ought to see Cos while you’re here.”

“Who runs it for you?”

“Of course I have a crew, but Albert chiefly. He’s very clever with motors and all that.”

He did not know why it gave him a vague discomfort to hear her speak of the chauffeur again. Carruthers wondered if she did not leave too much in his hands. It was a mistake to give a servant too much leeway.

“You know, I couldn’t help thinking I’d seen Albert before somewhere. But I can’t place him.”

She smiled brightly, her eyes shining, with that sudden gaiety of hers that gave her face its delightful frankness.

“You ought to remember him. He was the second footman at Aunt Louise’s. He must have opened the door to you hundreds of times.”

Aunt Louise was the aunt with whom Betty had lived before her marriage.

“Oh, is that who he is? I suppose I must have seen him there without noticing him. How does he happen to be here?”

“He comes from our place at home. When I married he wanted to come with me, so I took him. He was Jimmie’s valet for some time and then I sent him to some motor works, he was mad about cars, and eventually I took him on as my chauffeur. I don’t know what I should do without him now.”

“Don’t you think it’s rather a mistake to get too dependent on a servant?”

“I don’t know. It never occurred to me.”

Betty showed him the rooms that had been got ready for him, and when he had changed they strolled down to the beach. A dinghy was waiting for them and they rowed out to the caïque and bathed from there. The water was warm and they sunned themselves on the deck. The caïque was roomy, comfortable, and luxurious. Betty showed him over and they came upon Albert tinkering with the engines. He was in filthy overalls, his hands were black and his face was smeared with grease.

“What’s the matter, Albert?” said Betty.

He raised himself and faced her respectfully.

“Nothing, m’lady. I was just “aving a look round.”

“There are only two things Albert loves in the world. One is the car and the other’s the yacht. Isn’t that true, Albert?”

She gave him a gay smile and Albert’s rather stolid face lit up. He showed his beautiful white teeth.

“That’s true, m’lady.”

“He sleeps on board, you know. We rigged up a very nice cabin for him aft.”

Carruthers fell into the life very easily. Betty had bought the estate from a Turkish pasha exiled to Rhodes by Abdul Hamid and she had added a wing to the picturesque house. She had made a wild garden of the olive grove that surrounded it. It was planted with rosemary and lavender and asphodel, broom that she had sent from England and the roses for which the island was famous. In the spring, she told him, the ground was carpeted with anemones. But when she showed him her property, telling him her plans and what alterations she had in mind, Carruthers could not help feeling a little uneasy.

“You talk as though you were going to live here all your life,” he said.

“Perhaps I am,” she smiled.

“What nonsense! At your age.”

“I’m getting on for forty, old boy,” she answered lightly.

He discovered with satisfaction that Betty had an excellent cook and it gratified his sense of propriety to dine with her in the splendid dining-room, with its Italian furniture, and be waited on by the dignified Greek butler and the two handsome footmen in their flamboyant uniforms. The house was furnished with taste; the rooms contained nothing that was not essential, but every piece was good. Betty lived in considerable state. When, the day after his arrival, the Governor with several members of his staff came over to dinner she displayed all the resources of the household. The Governor entering the house passed between a double row of flunkeys magnificent in their starched petticoats, embroidered jackets, and velvet caps. It was almost a bodyguard. Carruthers liked the grand style. The dinner-party was very gay. Betty’s Italian was fluent and Carruthers spoke it perfectly. The young officers in the Governor’s suite were uncommonly smart in their uniforms. They were very attentive to Betty and she treated them with easy cordiality. She chaffed them. After dinner the gramophone was turned on and they danced with her one after the other.

When they were gone Carruthers asked her: “Aren’t they all madly in love with you?”

“I don’t know about that. They hint occasionally at alliances permanent or otherwise, but they take it very good-naturedly when I decline with thanks.”

They were not serious. The young ones were callow and the not so young were fat and bald. Whatever they might feel about her Carruthers could not for a moment believe that Betty would make a fool of herself with a middle-class Italian. But a day or two later a curious thing happened. He was in his rooms dressing for dinner; he heard a man’s voice outside in the passage, he could not hear what was said or what language was spoken, and then ringing out suddenly Betty’s laughter. It was a charming laugh, rippling and gay, like a young girl’s, and it had a joyous abandon that was infectious. But whom could she be laughing with? It was not the way you would laugh with a servant. It had a curious intimacy. It may seem strange that Carruthers read all this into a peal of laughter, but it must be remembered that Carruthers was very subtle. His stories were remarkable for such touches.

When they met presently on the terrace and he was shaking a cocktail he sought to gratify his curiosity.

“What were you laughing your head off over just now? Has anyone been here?”

“No.”

She looked at him with genuine surprise.

“I thought one of your Italian officers had come to pass the time of day.”

“No.”

Of course the passage of years had had its effect on Betty. She was beautiful, but her beauty was mature. She had always had assurance, but now she had repose; her serenity was a feature, like her blue eyes and her candid brow, that was part of her beauty. She seemed to be at peace with all the world; it rested you to be with her as it rested you to lie among the olives within sight of the wine-coloured sea. Though she was as gay and witty as ever, the seriousness which once he had been alone to know was now patent. No one could accuse her any longer of being scatter-brained; it was impossible not to perceive the fineness of her character. It had even nobility. That was not a trait it was usual to find in the modern woman and Carruthers said to himself that she was a throw back; she reminded him of the great ladies of the eighteenth century.

She had always had a feeling for literature, the poems she wrote as a girl were graceful and melodious, and he was more interested than surprised when she told him that she had undertaken a solid historical work. She was getting materials together for an account of the Knights of St John in Rhodes. It was a story of romantic incidents. She took Carruthers to the city and showed him the noble battlements and together they wandered through austere and stately buildings. They strolled up the silent Street of the Knights with the lovely stone facades and the great coats of arms that recalled a dead chivalry. She had a surprise for him there. She had bought one of the old houses and with affectionate care had restored it to its old state. When you entered the little courtyard, with its carved stone stairway, you were taken back into the middle ages. It had a tiny walled garden in which a fig-tree grew and roses. It was small and secret and silent. The old knights had been in contact with the East long enough to have acquired Oriental ideas of privacy.

“When I’m tired of the villa I come here for two or three days and picnic. It’s a relief sometimes not to be surrounded by people.”

“But you’re not alone here?”

“Practically.”

There was a little parlour austerely furnished.

“What is this?” said Carruthers pointing with a smile to a copy of the Sporting Times that lay on a table.

“Oh, that’s Albert’s. I suppose he left it here when he came to meet you. He has the Sporting Times and the News of the World sent him every week. That is how he keeps abreast of the great world.”

She smiled tolerantly. Next to the parlour was a bedroom with nothing much in it but a large bed.

“The house belonged to an Englishman. That’s partly why I bought it. He was a Sir Giles Quern, and one of my ancestors married a Mary Quern who was a cousin of his. They were Cornish people.”

Finding that she could not get on with her history without such a knowledge of Latin as would enable her to read the medieval documents with ease, Betty had set about learning the classical language. She troubled to acquire only the elements of grammar and then started, with a translation by her side, to read the authors that interested her. It is a very good method of learning a language and I have often wondered that it is not used in schools. It saves all the endless turning over of dictionaries and the fumbling search for meaning. After nine months Betty could read Latin as fluently as most of us can read French. It seemed a trifle ridiculous to Carruthers that this lovely, brilliant creature should take her work so seriously and yet he was moved; he would have liked to snatch her in his arms and kiss her, not at that moment as a woman, but as a precocious child whose cleverness suddenly enchants you. But later he reflected upon what she had told him. He was of course a very clever man, otherwise he could not have attained the position he held in the Foreign Office, and it would be silly to claim that those two books of his could have made so much stir without some merit; if I have made him look a bit of a fool it is only because I did not happen to like him, and if I have derided his stories it is merely because stories of that sort seem to me rather silly. He had tact and insight. He had a conviction that there was but one way to win her. She was in a groove and happy in it, her plans were definite; but her life at Rhodes was so well-ordered, so complete and satisfying, that for that very reason its hold over her could be combated. His chance was to arouse in her the restlessness that lies deep in the heart of the English. So he talked to Betty of England and

London, their common friends and the painters, writers, and musicians with whom his literary success had brought him acquaintance. He talked of the Bohemian parties in Chelsea, and of the opera, of trips to Paris en bande for a fancy-dress ball, or to Berlin to see the new plays. He recalled to her imagination a life rich and easy, varied, cultured, intelligent, and highly civilized. He tried to make her feel that she was stagnating in a backwater. The world was hurrying on, from one new and interesting phase to another, and she was standing still. They were living in a thrilling age and she was missing it. Of course he did not tell her this; he left her to infer it. He was amusing and spirited, he had an excellent memory for a good story, he was whimsical and gay. I know I have not made Humphrey Carruthers witty any more than I have shown Lady Betty brilliant. The reader must take my word for it that they were. Carruthers was generally reckoned an entertaining companion, and that is half the battle; people were willing to find him amusing and they vowed the things he said were marvellous. Of course his wit was social. It needed a particular company, who understood his allusions and shared his exclusive sense of humour. There are a score of journalists in Fleet Street who could knock spots off the most famous of the society wits; it is their business to be witty and brilliance is in their day’s work. There are a few of the society beauties whose photographs appear in the papers who could get a job at three pounds a week in the chorus of a song-and-dance show. Amateurs must be judged with tolerance. Carruthers knew that Betty enjoyed his society. They laughed a great deal together. The days passed in a flash.

“I shall miss you terribly when you go,” she said in her frank way. “It’s been a treat having you here. You are a sweet, Humphrey.”

“Have you only just discovered it?”

He patted himself on the back. His tactics had been right. It was interesting to see how well his simple plan had worked. Like a charm. The vulgar might laugh at the Foreign Office, but there was no doubt it taught you how to deal with difficult people. Now he had but to choose his opportunity. He felt that Betty had never been more attached to him. He would wait till the end of his visit. Betty was emotional. She would be sorry that he was going. Rhodes would seem very dull without him. Whom would she have to talk to when he was gone? After dinner they usually sat on the terrace looking at the starry sea; the air was warm and balmy and vaguely scented: it was then he would ask her to marry him, on the eve of his departure. He felt it in his bones that she would accept him.

One morning when he had been in Rhodes a little over a week, he happened to be coming upstairs as Betty was walking along the passage.

“You’ve never shown me your room, Betty,” he said.

“Haven’t I? Come in and have a look now. It’s rather nice.”

She turned back and he followed her in. It was over the drawing-room and nearly as large. It was furnished in the Italian style, and as is the present way more like a sitting-room than a bedroom. There were fine Paninis on the walls and one or two handsome cabinets. The bed was Venetian and beautifully painted.

“That’s a couch of rather imposing dimensions for a widow lady,” he said facetiously.

“It is enormous, isn’t it? But it was so lovely, I had to buy it. It cost a fortune.” His eye took in the bed-table by the side. There were two or three books on it, a box of cigarettes, and on an ash-tray a briar pipe. Funny! What on earth had Betty got a pipe by her bed for?

“Do look at this cassone. Isn’t the painting marvellous? I almost cried when I found it.”

“I suppose that cost a fortune too.”

“I daren’t tell you what I paid.”

When they were leaving the room he cast another glance at the bed-table. The pipe had vanished.

It was odd that Betty should have a pipe in her bedroom, she certainly didn’t smoke one herself, and if she had would have made no secret of it, but of course there were a dozen reasonable explanations. It might be a present she was making to somebody, one of the Italians or even Albert, he had not been able to see if it was new or old, or it might be a pattern that she was going to ask him to take home to have others of the same sort sent out to her. After the moment’s perplexity, not altogether unmingled with amusement, he put the matter out of his mind. They were going for a picnic that day, taking their luncheon with them, and Betty was driving him herself. They had arranged to go for a cruise of a couple of days before he left so that he should see Patmos and Cos, and Albert was busy with the engines of the caïque. They had a wonderful day. They visited a ruined castle and climbed a mountain on which grew asphodel, hyacinth, and narcissus, and returned dead beat. They separated not long after dinner and Carruthers went to bed. He read for a little and then turned out his light. But he could not sleep. It was hot under his mosquito-net. He turned and tossed. Presently he thought he would go down to the little beach at the foot of the hill and bathe. It was not more than three minutes’ walk. He put on his espadrilles and took a towel. The moon was full and he saw it shining on the sea through the olive-trees. But he was not alone to have thought that this radiant night would be lovely to bathe in, for just before he came out on to the beach sounds reached his ears. He muttered a little damn of vexation, some of Betty’s servants were bathing, and he could not very well disturb them. The olive-trees came almost to the water’s edge and undecided he stood in their shelter. He heard a voice that gave him a sudden start.

“Where’s my towel?”

English. A woman waded out of the water and stood for a moment at its edge. From the darkness a man came forward with nothing but a towel round his loins. The woman was Betty. She was stark naked. The man wrapped a bathrobe round her and began drying her vigorously. She leaned on him while she put on first one shoe and then the other and to support her he placed his arm round her shoulders. The man was Albert.

Carruthers turned and fled up the hill. He stumbled blindly. Once he nearly fell. He was gasping like a wounded beast. When he got into his room he flung himself on the bed and clenched his fists and the dry, painful sobs that tore his chest broke into tears. He evidently had a violent attack of hysterics. It was all clear to him, clear with the ghastly vividness with which on a stormy night a flash of lightning can disclose a ravaged landscape, clear, horribly clear. The way the man had dried her and the way she leaned against him pointed not to passion, but to a long-continued intimacy, and the pipe by the bedside, the pipe had a hideously conjugal air. It suggested the pipe a man might smoke while he was reading in bed before going to sleep. The Sporting Times! That was why she had that little house in the Street of the Knights, so that they could spend two or three days together in domestic familiarity. They were like an old married couple. Humphrey asked himself how long the hateful thing had lasted and suddenly he knew the answer: for years. Ten, twelve, fourteen;

it had started when the young footman first came to London, he was a boy then and it was obvious enough that it was not he who had made the advances; all through those years when she was the idol of the British public, when everyone adored her and she could have married anyone she liked, she was living with the second footman at her aunt’s house. She took him with her when she married. Why had she made that surprising marriage? And the still-born child that came before its time. Of course that was why she had married Jimmie Welldon-Burns, because she was going to have a child by Albert. Oh, shameless, shameless! And then, when Jimmie’s health broke down she had made him take Albert as his valet. And what had Jimmie known and what had he suspected? He drank, that was what had started his tuberculosis; but why had he started drinking? Perhaps it was to still a suspicion that was so ugly that he could not face it. And it was to live with Albert that she had left Jimmie and it was to live with Albert that she had settled in Rhodes. Albert, his hands with their broken nails stained by his work on the motors, coarse of aspect and stocky, rather like a butcher with his high colour and clumsy strength, Albert not even very young any more and running to fat, uneducated and vulgar, with his common way of speaking. Albert, Albert, how could she?

Carruthers got up and drank some water. He threw himself into a chair. He could not bear his bed. He smoked cigarette after cigarette. He was a wreck in the morning. He had not slept at all. They brought him in his breakfast; he drank the coffee but could eat nothing. Presently there was a brisk knock on his door.

“Coming down to bathe, Humphrey?”

That cheerful voice sent the blood singing through his head. He braced himself and opened the door.

“I don’t think I will today. I don’t feel very well.” She gave him a look.

“Oh, my dear, you look all in. What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know. I think I must have got a touch of the sun.”

His voice was dead and his eyes were tragic. She looked at him more closely. She did not say anything for a moment. He thought she went pale. He knew. Then a faintly mocking smile crossed her eyes; she thought the situation comic.

“Poor old boy, go and lie down, I’ll send you in some aspirin. Perhaps you’ll feel better at luncheon.”

He lay in his darkened room. He would have given anything to get away then so that he need not set eyes on her again, but there was no means of that, the ship that was to take him back to Brindisi did not touch at Rhodes till the end of the week. He was a prisoner. And the next day they were to go to the islands. There was no escape from her there; in the caïque they would be in one another’s pockets all day long. He couldn’t face that. He was so ashamed. But she wasn’t ashamed. At that moment when it had been plain to her that nothing was hidden from him any longer she had smiled. She was capable of telling him all about it. He could not bear that. That was too much. After all she couldn’t be certain that he knew, at best she could only suspect; if he behaved as if nothing had happened, if at luncheon and during the days that remained he was as gay and jolly as usual she would think she had been mistaken. It was enough to know what he knew, he would not suffer the crowning humiliation of hearing from her own lips the disgraceful story. But at luncheon the first thing she said was:

“Isn’t it a bore. Albert says something’s gone wrong with the motor, we shan’t be able to go on our trip after all. I daren’t trust to sail at this time of the year. We might be becalmed for a week.”

She spoke lightly and he answered in the same casual fashion.

“Oh, I’m sorry, but still I don’t really care. It’s so lovely here, I really didn’t much want to go.”

He told her that the aspirin had done him good and he felt much better; to the Greek butler and the two footmen in fustanellas it must have seemed that they talked as vivaciously as usual. That night the British consul came to dinner and the night after some Italian officers. Carruthers counted the days, he counted the hours. Oh, if the moment would only come when he could step on the ship and be free from the horror that every moment of the day obsessed him! He was growing so tired. But Betty’s manner was so self-possessed that sometimes he asked himself if she really knew that he was aware of her secret. Was it the truth that she had told about the caïque and not, as had at once struck him, an excuse; and was it an accident that a succession of visitors prevented them from ever being alone together? The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. When he looked at her, so easy and calm, so obviously happy, he could not believe the odious truth. And yet he had seen with his own eyes. And the future. What would her future be? It was horrible to think of. Sooner or later the truth must become notorious. And to think of Betty a mock and an outcast, in the power of a coarse and common man, growing older, losing her beauty; and the man was five years younger than she. One day he would take a mistress, one of her own maids, perhaps, with whom he would feel at home as he had never felt with the great lady, and what could she do then? What humiliation then must she be prepared to put up with! He might be cruel to her. He might beat her. Betty. Betty.

Carruthers wrung his hands. And on a sudden an idea came to him that filled him with a painful exaltation; he put it away from him, but it returned; it would not let him be. He must save her, he had loved her too much and too long to let her sink, sink as she was sinking; a passion of self-sacrifice welled up in him. Notwithstanding everything, though his love now was dead and he felt for her an almost physical repulsion, he would marry her. He laughed mirthlessly. What would his life be? He couldn’t help that. He didn’t matter. It was the only thing to do. He felt wonderfully uplifted, and yet very humble, for he was awed at the thoughts of the heights which the divine spirit of man could reach.

His ship was to sail on Saturday and on Thursday when the guests who had been dining left them, he said:

“I hope we’re going to be alone tomorrow.”

“As a matter of fact I’ve asked some Egyptians who spend the summer here. She’s a sister of the ex-Khedive and very intelligent. I’m sure you’ll like her.”

“Well, it’s my last evening. Couldn’t we spend it alone?”

She gave him a glance. There was a faint amusement in her eyes, but his were grave.

“If you like. I can put them off.”

“Then do.”

He was to start early in the morning and his luggage was packed. Betty had told him not to dress, but he had answered that he preferred to. For the last time they sat down to dinner facing one another. The dining-room, with its shaded lights, was bare and formal, but the summer night flooding in through the great open windows gave it a sober richness. It had the effect of the private refectory in a convent to which a royal lady had retired in order to devote the remainder of her life to a piety not too austere. They had their coffee on the terrace. Carruthers drank a couple of liqueurs. He was feeling very nervous.

“Betty, my dear, I’ve got something I want to say to you,” he began.

“Have you? I wouldn’t say it if I were you.”

She answered gently. She remained perfectly calm, watching him shrewdly, but with the glimmer of a smile in her blue eyes.

“I must.”

She shrugged her shoulders and was silent. He was conscious that his voice trembled a little and he was angry with himself

“You know I’ve been madly in love with you for many years. I don’t know how many times I’ve asked you to marry me. But, after all, things change and people change too, don’t they? We’re neither of us so young as we were. Won’t you marry me now, Betty?”

She gave him the smile that had always been such an attractive thing in her; it was so kindly, so frank, and still, still so wonderfully innocent.

“You’re very sweet, Humphrey. It’s awfully nice of you to ask me again. I can’t tell you how touched I am. But you know, I’m a creature of habit, I’ve got in the habit of saying no to you now, and I can’t change it.”

“Why not?”

There was something aggressive in his tone, something almost ominous, that made her give him a quick look. Her face blanched with sudden anger, but she immediately controlled herself.

“Because I don’t want to,” she smiled.

“Are you going to marry anyone else?”

“I? No. Of course not.”

For a moment she seemed to draw herself up as though a wave of ancestral pride swept through her and then she began to laugh. But whether she laughed at the thought that had passed through her mind or because something in Humphrey’s proposal had amused her none but she could have told.

“Betty. I implore you to marry me.”

“Never.”

“You can’t go on living this life.”

He put into his voice all the anguish of his heart and his face was drawn and tortured. She smiled affectionately.

“Why not? Don’t be such a donkey. You know I adore you, Humphrey, but you are rather an old woman.”

“Betty. Betty.”

Did she not see that it was for her sake that he wanted it? It was not love that made him speak, but human pity and shame. She got up.

“Don’t be tiresome, Humphrey. You’d better go to bed, you know you have to be up with the lark. I shan’t see you in the morning. Good-bye and God bless you. It’s been wonderful having you here.”

She kissed him on both cheeks.

Next morning, early, for he had to be on board at eight, when Carruthers stepped out of the front door he found Albert waiting for him in the car. He wore a singlet, duck trousers, and a beret basque. Carruthers’ luggage was in the back. He turned to the butler.

“Put my bags beside the chauffeur,” he said. “I’ll sit behind.”

Albert made no remark. Carruthers got in and they drove off. When they arrived at the harbour, porters ran up. Albert got out of the car. Carruthers looked down at him from his greater height.

“You need not see me on board. I can manage perfectly well by myself. Here’s a tip for you.”

He gave him a five-pound note. Albert flushed. He was taken aback, he would have liked to refuse it, but did not know how to and the servility of years asserted itself. Perhaps he did not know what he said.

“Thank you, sir.”

Carruthers gave him a curt nod and walked away. He had forced Betty’s lover to call him “sir’. It was as though he had struck her a blow across that smiling mouth of hers and flung in her face an opprobrious word. It filled him with a bitter satisfaction.

He shrugged his shoulders and I could see that even this small triumph now seemed vain. For a little while we were silent. There was nothing for me to say. Then he began again.

“I dare say you think it’s very strange that I should tell you all this. I don’t care. You know, I feel as if nothing mattered any more. I feel as if decency no longer existed in the world. Heaven knows, I’m not jealous. You can’t be jealous unless you love and my love is dead. It was killed in a flash. After all those years. I can’t think of her now without horror. What destroys me, what makes me so frightfully unhappy is to think of her unspeakable degradation.”

So it has been said that it was not jealousy that caused Othello to kill Desdemona, but an agony that the creature that he believed angelic should be proved impure and worthless. What broke his noble heart was that virtue should so fall.

“I thought there was no one like her. I admired her so much. I admired her courage and her frankness, her intelligence and her love of beauty. She’s just a sham and she’s never been anything else.”

“I wonder if that’s true. Do you think any of us are all of a piece? Do you know what strikes me? I should have said that Albert was only the instrument, her toll to the solid earth, so to speak; that left her soul at liberty to range the empyrean. Perhaps the mere fact that he was so far below her gave her a sense of freedom in her relations with him that she would have lacked with a man of her own class. The spirit is very strange, it never soars so high as when the body has wallowed for a period in the gutter.”

“Oh, don’t talk such rot,” he answered angrily.

“I don’t think it is rot. I don’t put it very well, but the idea’s sound.”

“Much good it does me. I’m broken and done for. I’m finished.”

“Oh, nonsense. Why don’t you write a story about it?”

“I?”

“You know, that’s the great pull a writer has over other people. When something has made him terribly unhappy, and he’s tortured and miserable, he can put it all into a story and it’s astonishing what a comfort and relief it is.”

“It would be monstrous. Betty was everything in the world to me. I couldn’t do anything so caddish.”

He paused for a little and I saw him reflect. I saw that notwithstanding the horror that my suggestion caused him he did for one minute look at the situation from the standpoint of the writer. He shook his head.

“Not for her sake, for mine. After all I have some self-respect. Besides, there’s no story there.”

THE ALIEN CORN

I HAD known the Blands a long time before I discovered that they had any connexion with Ferdy Rabenstein. Ferdy must have been nearly fifty when I first knew him and at the time of which I write he was well over seventy. He had altered little. His hair, coarse but abundant and curly, was white, but he had kept his figure and held himself as gallantly as ever. It was not hard to believe that in youth he had been as beautiful as people said. He had still his fine Semitic profile and the lustrous black eyes that had caused havoc in so many a Gentile breast. He was very tall, lean, with an oval face and a clear skin. He wore his clothes very well and in evening dress, even now, he was one of the handsomest men I had ever seen. He wore then large black pearls in his shirt-front and platinum and sapphire rings on his fingers. Perhaps he was rather flashy, but you felt it was so much in character that it would have ill become him to be anything else.

“After all, I am an Oriental,” he said. “I can carry a certain barbaric magnificence.”

I have often thought that Ferdy Rabenstein would make an admirable subject for a biography. He was not a great man, but within the limits he set himself he made of his life a work of art. It was a masterpiece in little, like a Persian miniature, and derived its interest from its perfection. Unfortunately the materials are scanty. They would consist of letters that may very well have been destroyed and the recollections of people who are old now and will soon be dead. His memory is extraordinary, but he would never write his memoirs, for he looks upon his past as a source of purely private entertainment; and he is a man of the most perfect discretion. Nor do I know anyone who could do justice to the subject but Max Beerbohm. There is no one else in this hard world of today who can look upon the trivial with such tender sympathy and wring such a delicate pathos from futility. I wonder that Max, who must have known Ferdy much better than I, and long before, was never tempted to exercise his exquisite fancy on such a theme. He was born for Max to write about. And who should have illustrated the elegant book that I see in my mind’s eye but Aubrey Beardsley? Thus would have been erected a monument of triple brass and the ephemera imprisoned to succeeding ages in the amber’s translucency.

Ferdy’s conquests were social and his venue was the great world. He was born in South Africa and did not come to England till he was twenty. For some time he was on the Stock Exchange, but on the death of his father he inherited a considerable fortune, and retiring from business devoted himself to the life of a man about town. At that period English society was still a closed body and it was not easy for a Jew to force its barriers, but to Ferdy they fell like the walls of Jericho. He was handsome, he was rich, he was a sportsman and he was good company. He had a house in Curzon Street, furnished with the most beautiful French furniture, and a French chef, and a brougham. It would be interesting to know the first steps in his wonderful career: they are lost in the dark abysm of time. When I first met him he had been long established as one of the smartest men in London: this was at a very grand house in Norfolk to which I had been asked as a promising young novelist by the hostess who took an interest in letters, but the company was very distinguished and I was over-awed. We were sixteen, and I felt shy and alone among these Cabinet Ministers, great ladies, and peers of the realm who talked of people and things of which I knew nothing. They were civil to me, but indifferent, and I was conscious that I was somewhat of a burden to my hostess. Ferdy saved me. He sat with me, walked with me, and talked with me. He discovered that I was a writer and we discussed the drama and the novel: he learnt that I had lived much on the Continent and he talked to me pleasantly of France, Germany, and Spain. He seemed really to seek my society. He gave me the flattering impression that he and I stood apart from the other members of the company and by our conversation upon affairs of the spirit made that of the rest of them, the political situation, the scandal of somebody’s divorce, and the growing disinclination of pheasants to be killed, seem a little ridiculous. But if Ferdy had at the bottom of his heart a feeling of ever so faint a contempt for the hearty British gentry that surrounded us I am sure that it was only to me that he allowed an inkling of it to appear, and looking back I cannot but wonder whether it was not after all a suave and very delicate compliment that he paid me. I think of course that he liked to exercise his charm and I dare say the obvious pleasure his conversation gave me gratified him, but he could have had no motive for taking so much trouble over an obscure novelist other than his real interest in art and letters. I felt that he and I at bottom were equally alien in that company, I because I was a writer and he because he was a Jew, but I envied the ease with which he bore himself. He was completely at home. Everyone called him Ferdy. He seemed to be always in good spirits. He was never at a loss for a quip, a jest, or a repartee. They liked him in that house because he made them laugh, but never made them uncomfortable by talking over their heads. He brought a faint savour of Oriental romance into their lives, but so cleverly that they only felt more English. You could never be dull when he was by and with him present you were safe from the fear of the devastating silences that sometimes overwhelm a British company. A pause looked inevitable and Ferdy Rabenstein had broken into a topic that interested everyone. An invaluable asset to any party. He had an inexhaustible fund of

Jewish stories. He was a very good mimic and he assumed the Yiddish accent and reproduced the Jewish gestures to perfection; his head sank into his body, his face grew cunning, his voice oily, and he was a rabbi or an old clothes merchant or a smart commercial traveller or a fat procuress in Frankfort. It was as good as a play. Because he was himself a Jew and insisted on it you laughed without reserve, but for my own part not without an under-current of discomfort. I was not quite sure of a sense of humour that made such cruel fun of his own race. I discovered afterwards that Jewish stories were his speciality and I seldom met him anywhere without hearing him tell sooner or later the last he had heard.

But the best story he told me on this occasion was not a Jewish one. It struck me so that I have never forgotten it, but for one reason or another I have never had occasion to tell it again. I give it here because it is a curious little incident concerning persons whose names at least will live in the social history of the Victorian Era and I think it would be a pity if it were lost. He told me then that once when quite a young man he was staying in the country in a house where Mrs Langtry, at that time at the height of her beauty and astounding reputation, was also a guest. It happened to be within driving distance of that in which lived the Duchess of Somerset, who had been Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton Tournament, and knowing her slightly, it occurred to him that it would be interesting to bring the two women together. He suggested it to Mrs Langtry, who was willing, and forthwith wrote to the Duchess asking if he might bring the celebrated beauty to call on her. It was fitting, he said, that the loveliest women of this generation (this was in the eighties) should pay her respects to the loveliest woman of the last. “Bring her by all means,” answered the Duchess, “but I warn you that it will be a shock to her.” They drove over in a carriage and pair, Mrs Langtry in a close-fitting blue bonnet with long satin strings, which showed the fine shape of her head and made her blue eyes even bluer, and were received by a little ugly old hag who looked with irony out of her beady eyes at the radiant beauty who had come to see her. They had tea, they talked, and they drove home again. Mrs Langtry was very silent and when Ferdy looked at her he saw that she was quietly weeping. When they got back to the house she went to her room and would not come down to dinner that night. For the first time she had realized that beauty dies.

Ferdy asked me for my address and a few days after I got back to London invited me to dinner. There were only six of us, an American woman married to an English peer, a Swedish painter, an actress, and a well-known critic. We ate very good food and drank excellent wine. The conversation was easy and intelligent. After dinner Ferdy was persuaded to play the piano. He only played Viennese waltzes, I discovered later that they were his speciality, and the light, tuneful, and sensual music seemed to accord well with his discreet flamboyance. He played without affectation, with a lilt, and he had a graceful touch. This was the first of a good many dinners I had with him, he would ask me two or three times a year, and as time passed I met him more and more frequently at other people’s houses. I rose in the world and perhaps he came down a little. Of late years I had sometimes found him at parties where other Jews were and I fancied that I read in his shining liquid eyes, resting for a moment on these members of his race, a certain good-natured amusement at the thought of what the world was coming to. There were people who said he was a snob, but I do not think he was; it just happened that in his early days he had never met any but the great. He had a real passion for art and in his commerce with those that produced it was at his best. With them he had never that faint air of persiflage which when he was with very grand persons made you suspect that he was never quite the dupe of their grandeur. His taste was perfect and many of his friends were glad to avail themselves of his knowledge. He was one of the first to value old furniture and he rescued many a priceless piece from the attics of ancestral mansions and gave it an honourable place in the drawing-room. It amused him to saunter round the auction rooms and he was always willing to give his advice to great ladies who desired at once to acquire a beautiful thing and make a profitable investment. He was rich and good-natured. He liked to patronize the arts and would take a great deal of trouble to get commissions for some young painter whose talent he admired or an engagement to play at a rich man’s house for a violinist who could in no other way get a hearing. But he never let his rich man down. His taste was too good to deceive and civil though he might be to the mediocre he would not lift a finger to help them. His own musical parties, very small and carefully chosen, were a treat.

He never married.

“I am a man of the world,” he said, “and I flatter myself that I have no prejudices, tous les goûts sont dans la nature, but I do not think I could bring myself to marry a Gentile. There’s no harm in going to the opera in a dinner jacket, but it just would never occur to me to do so.”

“Then why didn’t you marry a Jewess?”

(I did not hear this conversation, but the lively and audacious creature who thus tackled him told me of it.)

“Oh, my dear, our women are so prolific. I could not bear the thought of peopling the world with a little Ikey and a little Jacob and a little Rebecca and a little Leah and a little Rachel.”

But he had had affairs of note and the glamour of past romance still clung to him. He was in his youth of an amorous complexion. I have met old ladies who told me that he was irresistible, and when in reminiscent mood they talked to me of this woman and that who had completely lost her head over him, I divined that, such was his beauty, they could not find it in their hearts to blame them. It was interesting to hear of great ladies that I had read of in the memoirs of the day or had met as respectable dowagers garrulous over their grandsons at Eton or making a mess of a hand at bridge and bethink myself that they had been consumed with sinful passion for the handsome Jew. Ferdy’s most

notorious amour was with the Duchess of Hereford, the loveliest, the most

gallant and dashing of the beauties of the end of Queen Victoria’s reign. It lasted for twenty years. He had doubtless flirtations meanwhile, but their relations were stable and recognized. It was proof of his marvellous tact that when at last they ended he exchanged an ageing mistress for a loyal friend. I remember meeting the pair not so very long ago at luncheon. She was an old woman, tall and of a commanding presence, but with a mask of paint on a ravaged face. We were lunching at the Carlton and Ferdy, our host, came a few minutes late. He offered us a cocktail and the Duchess told him we had already had one.

“Ah, I wondered why your eyes were so doubly bright,” he said.

The old raddled woman flushed with pleasure.

My youth passed, I grew middle-aged, I wondered how soon I must begin to describe myself as elderly; I wrote books and plays, I travelled, I underwent experiences, I fell in love and out of it; and still I kept meeting Ferdy at parties. War broke out and was waged, millions of men were killed, and the face of the world was changed. Ferdy did not like the war. He was too old to take part in it, and his German name was awkward, but he was discreet and took care not to expose himself to humiliation. His old friends were faithful to him and he lived in a dignified but not too strict seclusion. But then peace came and with courage he set himself to making the best of changed conditions. Society was mixed now, parties were rowdy, but Ferdy fitted himself to the new life. He still told his funny Jewish stories, he still played charmingly the waltzes of Strauss, he still went round auction rooms and told the new rich what they ought to buy. I went to live abroad, but whenever I was in London I saw Ferdy and now there was something a little uncanny in him. He did not give in. He had never known a day’s illness. He seemed never to grow tired. He still dressed beautifully. He was interested in everybody. His mind was alert and people asked him to dinner, not for old times’ sake, but because he was worth his salt. He still gave charming little concerts at his house in Curzon Street.

It was when he invited me to one of these that I made the discovery that started the recollections of him I have here set down. We were dining at a house in Hill Street, a large party, and the women having gone upstairs Ferdy and I found ourselves side by side. He told me that Lea Makart was coming to play for him on the following Friday evening and he would be glad if I would come.

“I’m awfully sorry,” I said, “but I’m going down to the Blands.”

“What Blands?”

“They live in Sussex at a place called Tilby.”

“I didn’t know you knew them.”

He looked at me rather strangely. He smiled. I didn’t know what amused him.

“Oh, yes, I’ve known them for years. It’s a very nice house to stay at.”

“Adolf is my nephew.”

“Sir Adolphus?”

“It suggests one of the bucks of the Regency, doesn’t it? But I will not conceal from you that he was named Adolf.”

“Everyone I know calls him Freddy.”

“I know, and I understand that Miriam, his wife, only answers to the name of Muriel.”

“How does he happen to be your nephew?”

“Because Hannah Rabenstein, my sister, married Alfons Bleikogel, who ended life as Sir Alfred Bland, first Baronet, and Adolf, their only son, in due course became Sir Adolphus Bland, second Baronet.”

“Then Freddy Bland’s mother, the Lady Bland who lives in Portland Place, is your sister?”

“Yes, my sister Hannah. She was the eldest of the family. She’s eighty, but in full possession of her faculties and a remarkable woman.”

“I’ve never met her.”

“I think your friends the Blands would just as soon you didn’t. She has never lost her German accent.”

“Do you never see them?” I asked.

“I haven’t spoken to them for twenty years. I am such a Jew and they are so English.” He smiled. “I could never remember that their names were Freddy and Muriel. I used to come out with an Adolf or a Miriam at awkward moments. And they didn’t like my stories. It was better that we should not meet. When the war broke out and I would not change my name it was the last straw. It was too late, I could never have accustomed my friends to think of me as anything but Ferdy Rabenstein; I was quite content. I was not ambitious to be a Smith, a Brown or a Robinson.”

Though he spoke facetiously, there was in his tone the faintest possible derision and I felt, hardly felt even, the sensation was so shadowy, that, as it had often vaguely seemed to me before, there was in the depth of his impenetrable heart a cynical contempt for the Gentiles he had conquered.

“Then you don’t know the two boys?” I said.

“No.”

“The eldest is called George, you know. I don’t think he’s so clever as Harry, the other one, but he’s an engaging youth. I think you’d like him.”

“Where is he now?”

“Well, he’s just been sent down from Oxford. I suppose he’s at home. Harry’s still at Eton.”

“Why don’t you bring George to lunch with me?”

“I’ll ask him. I should think he’d love to come.”

“It has reached my ears that he’s been a little troublesome.”

“Oh, I don’t know. He wouldn’t go into the army, which is what they wanted. They rather fancied the Guards. And so he went to Oxford instead. He didn’t work and he spent a great deal of money and he painted the town red. It was all quite normal.”

“What was he sent down for?”

“I don’t know. Nothing of any consequence.”

At that moment our host rose and we went upstairs. When Ferdy bade me good night he asked me not to forget about his great-nephew.

“Ring me up,” he said. “Wednesday would suit me. Or Friday.”

Next day I went down to Tilby. It was an Elizabethan mansion standing in a spacious park, in which roamed fallow deer, and from its windows you had wide views of rolling downs. It seemed to me that as far as the eye could reach the land belonged to the Blands. His tenants must have found Sir Adolphus a wonderful landlord, for I never saw farms kept in such order, the barns and cow-sheds were spick and span and the pigsties were a picture; the public-houses looked like Old English water-colours and the cottages he had built on the estate combined admirably picturesqueness and convenience. It must have cost him a pot of money to run the place on these lines. Fortunately he had it. The park with its grand old trees (and its nine-hole golf course) was tended like a garden, and the wide-stretching gardens were the pride of the neighbourhood. The magnificent house, with its steep roofs and mullioned windows, had been restored by the most celebrated architect in England and furnished by Lady Bland, with taste and knowledge, in a style that perfectly fitted it.

“Of course it’s very simple,” she said. “Just an English house in the country.”

The dining-room was adorned with old English sporting pictures and the Chippendale chairs were of incredible value. In the drawing-room were portraits by Reynolds and Gainsborough and landscapes by Old Crome and Richard Wilson. Even in my bedroom with its four-post bed were water-colours by Birket Foster. It was very beautiful and a treat to stay there, but though it would have distressed Muriel Bland beyond anything to know it, it entirely missed oddly enough the effect she had sought. It did not give you for a moment the impression of an English house. You had the feeling that every object had been bought with a careful eye to the general scheme. You missed the full Academy portraits that hung in the dining-room beside a Carlo Dolci that an ancestor had brought back from the Grand Tour, and the water-colours painted by a great-aunt that cluttered up the drawing-room so engagingly. There was no ugly Victorian sofa that had always been there and that it never occurred to anybody to take away and no needlework chairs that an unmarried daughter had so painstakingly worked at about the time of the Great Exhibition. There was beauty but no sentiment.

And yet how comfortable it was and how well looked after you were! And what a cordial greeting the Blands gave you! They seemed really to like people. They were generous and kindly. They were never happier than when they were entertaining the county, and though they had not owned the property for more than twenty years they had established themselves firmly in the favour of their neighbours. Except perhaps in their splendour and the competent way in which the estate was run there was nothing to suggest that they had not been settled there for centuries.

Freddy had been at Eton and Oxford. He was now in the early fifties. He was quiet in manner, courtly, very clever, I imagine, but a trifle reserved. He had great elegance, but it was not an English elegance; he had grey hair and a short pointed grey beard, fine dark eyes and an aquiline nose. He was just above middle height; I don’t think you would have taken him for a Jew, but rather for a foreign diplomat of some distinction. He was a man of character, but gave you, strangely enough, notwithstanding the success he had had in life, an impression of faint melancholy. His successes had been financial and political; in the world of sport, for all his perseverance, he had never shone. For many years he had followed hounds, but he was a bad rider and I think it must have been a relief to him when he could persuade himself that middle age and pressure of business forced him to give up hunting. He had excellent shooting and gave grand parties for it, but he was a poor shot; and despite the course in his park he never succeeded in being more than an indifferent golfer. He knew only too well how much these things meant in England and his incapacity was a bitter disappointment to him. However George would make up for it.

George was scratch at golf, and though tennis was not his game he played much better than the average; the Blands had had him taught to shoot as soon as he was old enough to hold a gun and he was a fine shot; they had put him on a pony when he was two, and Freddy, watching him mount his horse, knew that out hunting when the boy came to a fence he felt exhilaration and not that sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, which, though he had chased the fox with such grim determination, had always made the sport a torture to him. George was so tall and slim, his curly hair, of a palish brown, was so fine, his eyes were so blue, he was the perfect type of the young Englishman. He had the engaging candour of the breed. His nose was straight, though perhaps a trifle fleshy, and his lips were perhaps a little full and sensual, but he had beautiful teeth, and his smooth skin was like ivory. George was the apple of his father’s eye. He did not like Harry, his second son, so well. He was rather stocky, broad-shouldered and strong for his age, but his black eyes, shining with cleverness, his coarse dark hair, and his big nose revealed his race. Freddy was severe with him, and often impatient, but with George he was all indulgence. Harry would go into the business, he had brains and push, but George was the heir. George would be an English gentleman.

George had offered to motor me down in the roadster his father had given him as a birthday present. He drove very fast and we arrived before the rest of the guests. The Blands were sitting on the lawn and tea was laid out under a magnificent cedar.

“By the way,” I said presently, “I saw Ferdy Rabenstein the other day and he wants me to bring George to lunch with him.”

I had not mentioned the invitation to George on the way because I thought that if there had been a family coldness I had better address his parents as well.

“Who in God’s name is Ferdy Rabenstein?” said George.

How brief is human glory! A generation back such a question would have seemed grotesque.

“He’s by way of being your great-uncle,” I replied.

A glance had passed from father to mother when I first spoke.

“He’s a horrid old man,” said Muriel.

“I don’t think it’s in the least necessary for George to resume relationships that were definitely severed before he was born,” said Freddy with decision.

“Anyhow I’ve delivered the message,” said I, feeling somewhat snubbed.

“I don’t want to see the old blighter,” said George.

The conversation was broken off by the arrival of other guests and in a little while George went off to play golf with one of his Oxford friends.

It was not till next day that the matter was referred to again. I had played an unsatisfactory round with Freddy Bland in the morning and several sets of what is known as country-house tennis in the afternoon and was sitting alone with Muriel on the terrace. In England we have so much bad weather that it is only fair that a beautiful day should be more beautiful than anywhere in the world and this June evening was perfect. The blue sky was cloudless and the air was balmy; before us stretched green rolling downs, and woods, and in the distance you saw the red roofs of a little village church. It was a day when to be alive was sufficient happiness. Detached lines of poetry hovered vaguely in my memory. Muriel and I had been chatting desultorily.

“I hope you didn’t think it rather horrid of us to refuse to let George lunch with Ferdy,” she said suddenly. “He’s such a fearful snob, isn’t he?”

“D’you think so? He’s always been very nice to me.”

“We haven’t been on speaking terms for twenty years. Freddy never forgave him for his behaviour during the war. So unpatriotic, I thought, and one really must draw the line somewhere. You know, he absolutely refused to drop his horrible German name. With Freddy in Parliament and running munitions and all that sort of thing it was quite impossible. I don’t know why he should want to see George. He can’t mean anything to him.”

“He’s an old man. George and Harry are his great-nephews. He must leave his money to someone.”

“We’d rather not have his money,” said Muriel coldly.

Of course I didn’t care a row of pins whether George went to lunch with Ferdy Rabenstein, and I was quite willing to let the matter drop, but evidently the Blands had talked it over and Muriel felt that some explanation was due to me.

“Of course you know that Freddy has Jewish blood in him,” she said.

She looked at me sharply. Muriel was rather a big blonde woman and she spent a great deal of time trying to keep down the corpulence to which she was predisposed. She had been very pretty when young, and even now was a comely person; but her round blue eyes, slightly prominent, her fleshy nose, the shape of her face and the back of her neck, her exuberant manner, betrayed her race. No Englishwoman, however fair-haired, ever looked like that. And yet her observation was designed to make me take it for granted that she was a Gentile. I answered discreetly:

“So many people have nowadays.”

“I know. But there’s no reason to dwell on it, is there? After all, we’re absolutely English; no one could be more English than George, in appearance and manner and everything; I mean, he’s such a fine sportsman and all that sort of thing, I can’t see any object of his knowing Jews just because they happen to be distant connexions of his.”

“It’s very difficult in England now not to know Jews, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I know, in London one does meet a good many, and I think some of them are very nice. They’re so artistic. I don’t go so far as to say that Freddy and I deliberately avoid them, of course I wouldn’t do that, but it just happens that we don’t really know any of them very well. And down here, there simply aren’t any to know.”

I could not but admire the convincing manner in which she spoke. It would not have surprised me to be told that she really believed every word she said.

“You say that Ferdy might leave George his money. Well, I don’t believe it’s so very much anyway; it was quite a comfortable fortune before the war, but that’s nothing nowadays. Besides we’re hoping that George will go in for politics when he’s a little older, and I don’t think it would do him any good in the constituency to inherit money from a Mr Rabenstein.”

“Is George interested in politics?” I asked, to change the conversation.

“Oh, I do hope so. After all, there’s the family constituency waiting for him. It’s a safe Conservative seat and one can’t expect Freddy to go on with the grind of the House of Commons indefinitely.”

Muriel was grand. She talked already of the constituency as though twenty generations of Blands had sat for it. Her remark, however, was my first intimation that Freddy’s ambition was not satisfied.

“I suppose Freddy would go to the House of Lords when George was old enough to stand.”

“We’ve done a good deal for the party,” said Muriel.

Muriel was a Catholic and she often told you that she had been educated in a convent-“Such sweet women, those nuns, I always said that if I had a daughter I should have sent her to a convent too’-but she liked her servants to be Church of England, and on Sunday evenings we had what was called supper because the fish was cold and there was ice-cream, so that they could go to church, and we were waited on by two footmen instead of four. It was still light when we finished and Freddy and I, smoking our cigars, walked up and down the terrace in the gloaming. I suppose Muriel had told him of her conversation with me, and it may be that his refusal to let George see his great-uncle still troubled him, but being subtler than she he attacked the question more indirectly. He told me that he had been very much worried about George. It had been a great disappointment that he had refused to go into the army.

“I should have thought he’d have loved the life,” he said.

“And he would certainly have looked marvellous in his Guards uniform.”

“He would, wouldn’t he?” returned Freddy, ingenuously. “I wonder he could resist that.”

He had been completely idle at Oxford; although his father had given him a very large allowance, he had got monstrously into debt; and now he had been sent down. But though he spoke so tartly I could see that he was not a little proud of his scapegrace son, he loved him with oh, such an unEnglish love, and in his heart it flattered him that George had cut such a dash.

“Why should you worry?” I said. “You don’t really care if George has a degree or not.”

Freddy chuckled.

“No, I don’t suppose I do really. I always think the only important thing about Oxford is that people know you were there, and I dare say that George isn’t any wilder than the other young men in his set. It’s the future I’m thinking of. He’s so damned idle. He doesn’t seem to want to do anything but have a good time.”

“He’s young, you know.”

“He’s not interested in politics, and though he’s so good at games he’s not even very keen on sport. He seems to spend most of his time strumming the piano.”

“That’s a harmless amusement.”

“Oh, yes, I don’t mind that, but he can’t go on loafing indefinitely. You see, all this will be his one day.” Freddy gave a sweeping gesture that seemed to embrace the whole county, but I knew that he did not own it all yet. “I’m very anxious that he should be fit to assume his responsibilities. His mother is very ambitious for him, but I only want him to be an English gentleman.”

Freddy gave me a sidelong glance as though he wanted to say something but hesitated in case I thought it ridiculous; but there is one advantage in being a writer that, since people look upon you as of no account, they will often say things to you that they would not to their equals. He thought he would risk it.

“You know, I’ve got an idea that nowhere in the world now is the Greek ideal of life so perfectly cultivated as by the English country gentleman living on his estates. I think his life has the beauty of a work of art.”

I could not but smile when I reflected that it was impossible for the English country gentleman in these days to do anything of the sort without a packet of money safely invested in American Bonds, but I smiled with sympathy. I thought it rather touching that this Jewish financier should cherish so romantic a dream.

“I want him to be a good landlord. I want him to take his part in the affairs of the country. I want him to be a thorough sportsman.”

“Poor mutt,” I thought, but said: “Well, what are your plans for George now?”

“I think he has a fancy for the diplomatic service. He’s suggested going to Germany to learn the language.”

“A very good idea, I should have thought.”

“For some reason he’s got it into his head that he wants to go to Munich.”

“A nice place.”

Next day I went back to London and shortly after my arrival rang up Ferdy.

“I’m sorry, but George isn’t able to come to lunch on Wednesday.”

“What about Friday?”

“Friday’s no good either.” I thought it useless to beat about the bush. “The fact is, his people aren’t keen on his lunching with you.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then:

“I see. Well, will you come on Wednesday anyway?”

“Yes, I’d like to,” I answered.

So on Wednesday at half past one I strolled round to Curzon Street. Ferdy received me with the somewhat elaborate graciousness that he cultivated. He made no reference to the Blands. We sat in the drawing-room and I could not help reflecting what an eye for beautiful objects that family had. The room was more crowded than the fashion of today approves, and the gold snuff-boxes in vitrines, the French china, appealed to a taste that was not mine; but they were no doubt choice pieces; and the Louise XV suite, with its beautiful petit point, must have been worth an enormous lot of money. The pictures on the walls by Lancret, Pater, and Watteau did not greatly interest me, but I recognized their intrinsic excellence. It was a proper setting for this aged man of the world. It fitted his period. Suddenly the door opened and George was announced. Ferdy saw my surprise and gave me a little smile of triumph.

“I’m very glad you were able to come after all,” he said as he shook George’s hand.

I saw him in a glance take in his great-nephew whom he saw today for the first time. George was very well dressed. He wore a short black coat, striped trousers, and the grey double-breasted waistcoat which at that time was the mode. You could only wear it with elegance if you were tall and thin and your belly was slightly concave. I felt sure that Ferdy knew exactly who George’s tailor was and what haberdasher he went to and approved of them. George, so smart and trim, wearing his clothes so beautifully, certainly looked very handsome. We went down to luncheon. Ferdy had the social graces at his fingers’ ends and he put the boy at his ease, but I saw that he was carefully appraising him; then, I do not know why, he began to tell some of his Jewish stories. He told them with gusto and with all his wonderful mimicry. I saw George flush, and though he laughed at them, I could see that it was with embarrassment. I wondered what on earth had induced Ferdy to be so tactless. But he was watching George and he told story after story. It looked as though he would never stop. I wondered if for some reason I could not grasp he was taking a malicious pleasure in the boy’s obvious discomfiture. At last we went upstairs and to make things easier I asked Ferdy to play the piano. He played us three or four little waltzes. He had lost none of his exquisite lightness nor his sense of their lilting rhythm. Then he turned to George.

“Do you play?” he asked him.

“A little.”

“Won’t you play something?”

“I’m afraid I only play classical music. I don’t think it would interest you.”

Ferdy smiled slightly, but did not insist. I said it was time for me to go and George accompanied me.

“What a filthy old Jew,” he said as soon as we were in the street. “I hated those stories of his.”

“They’re his great stunt. He always tells them.”

“Would you if you were a Jew?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“How is it you came to lunch after all?” I asked George.

He chuckled. He was a light-hearted creature, with a sense of humour, and he shook off the slight irritation his great-uncle had caused him.

“He went to see Granny. You don’t know Granny, do you?”

“No.”

“She treats daddy like a kid in Etons. Granny said I was to go to lunch with great-uncle Ferdy and what Granny says goes.”

“I see.”

A week or two later George went to Munich to learn German. I happened then to go on a journey and it was not till the following spring that I was again in London. Soon after my arrival I found myself sitting next to Muriel Bland at dinner. I asked after George.

“He’s still in Germany,” she said.

“I see in the papers that you’re going to have a great beano at Tilby for his coming of age.”

“We’re going to entertain the tenants and they’re making George a presentation.”

She was less exuberant than usual, but I did not pay much attention to the fact. She led a strenuous life and it might be that she was tired. I knew she liked to talk of her son, so I continued.

“I suppose George has been having a grand time in Germany,” I said.

She did not answer for a moment and I gave her a glance. I was surprised to see that her eyes were filled with tears.

“I’m afraid George has gone mad,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been so frightfully worried. Freddy’s so angry, he won’t even discuss it. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Of course it immediately occurred to me that George, who, I supposed, like most young Englishmen sent to learn the language, had been put with a German family, had fallen in love with the daughter of the house and wanted to marry her. I had a pretty strong suspicion that the Blands were intent on his making a very grand marriage.

“Why, what’s happened?” I asked.

“He wants to become a pianist.”

“A what?”

“A professional pianist.”

“What on earth put that idea in his head?”

“Heaven knows. We didn’t know anything about it. We thought he was working for his exam. I went out to see him. I thought I’d like to know that he was getting on all right. Oh, my dear. He looks like nothing on earth. And he used to be so smart; I could have cried. He told me he wasn’t going in for the exam, and had never had any intention of doing so; he’d only suggested the diplomatic service so that we’d let him go to Germany and he’d be able to study music’

“But has he any talent?”

“Oh, that’s neither here nor there. Even if he had the genius of Paderewski we couldn’t have George traipsing around the country playing at concerts. No one can deny that I’m very artistic, and so is Freddy, we love music and we’ve always known a lot of artists, but George will have a very great position, it’s out of the question. We’ve set our hearts on his going into Parliament. He’ll be very rich one day. There’s nothing he can’t aspire to.”

“Did you point all that out to him?”

“Of course I did. He laughed at me. I told him he’d break his father’s heart. He said his father could always fall back on Harry. Of course I’m devoted to Harry, and he’s as clever as a monkey, but it was always understood that he was to go into the business; even though I am his mother I can see that he hasn’t got the advantages that George has. Do you know what he said to me? He said that if his father would settle five pounds a week on him he would resign everything in Harry’s favour and Harry could be his father’s heir and succeed to the baronetcy and everything. It’s too ridiculous. He said that if the Crown Prince of Roumania could abdicate a throne he didn’t see why he couldn’t abdicate a baronetcy. But you can’t do that. Nothing can prevent him from being third baronet and if Freddy should be granted a peerage from succeeding to it at Freddy’s death. Do you know, he even wants to drop the name of Bland and take some horrible German name.” I could not help asking what. “Bleikogel or something like that,” she answered.

That was a name I recognized. I remembered Ferdy telling me that Hannah Rabenstein had married Alfons Bleikogel who became eventually Sir Alfred Bland, first Baronet. It was all very strange. I wondered what had happened to the charming, so typically English boy I had seen only a few months before.

“Of course when I came home and told Freddy he was furious. I’ve never seen him so angry. He foamed at the mouth. He wired to George to come back immediately and George wired back to say he couldn’t on account of his work.”

“Is he working?”

“From morning till night. That’s the maddening part of it. He never did a stroke of work in his life. Freddy used to say he was born idle.”

“H’m.”

“Then Freddy wired to say that if he didn’t come he’d stop his allowance and George wired back: ‘Stop it.’ That put the lid on. You don’t know what Freddy can be when his back is up.”

I knew that Freddy had inherited a large fortune, but I knew also that he had immensely increased it, and I could well imagine that behind the courteous and amiable Squire of Tilby there was a ruthless man of affairs. He had been used to having his own way and I could believe that when crossed he would be hard and cruel.

“We’d been making George a very handsome allowance, but you know how frightfully extravagant he was. We didn’t think he’d be able to hold out long and in point of fact within a month he wrote to Ferdy and asked him to lend him a hundred pounds. Ferdy went to my mother-in-law, she’s his sister, you know, and asked her what it meant. Though they hadn’t spoken for twenty years Freddy went to see him and begged him not to send George a penny, and he promised he wouldn’t. I don’t know how George has been making both ends meet. I’m sure Freddy’s right, but I can’t help being rather worried. If I hadn’t given Freddy my word of honour that I wouldn’t send him anything I think I’d have slipped a few notes in a letter in case of accident. I mean, it’s awful to think that perhaps he hasn’t got enough to eat.”

“It’ll do him no harm to go short for a bit.”

“We were in an awful hole, you know. We’d made all sorts of preparations for his coming of age, and I’d issued hundreds of invitations. Suddenly George said he wouldn’t come. I was simply frantic. I wrote and wired. I would have gone over to Germany only Freddy wouldn’t let me. I practically went down on my bended knees to George. I begged him not to put us in such a humiliating position. I mean, it’s the sort of thing it’s so difficult to explain. Then my mother-in-law stepped in. You don’t know her, do you? She’s an extraordinary old woman. You’d never think she was Freddy’s mother. She was German originally, but of very good family.”

“Oh?”

“To tell you the truth I’m rather frightened of her. She tackled Freddy and then she wrote to George herself. She said that if he’d come home for his twenty-first birthday she’d pay any debts he had in Munich and we’d all give a patient hearing to anything he had to say. He agreed to that and we’re expecting him one day next week. But I’m not looking forward to it, I can tell you.”

She gave a deep sigh. When we were walking upstairs after dinner Freddy addressed me.

“I see Muriel has been telling you about George. The damned fool! I have no patience with him. Fancy wanting to be a pianist. It’s so ungentlemanly.”

“He’s very young, you know,” I said soothingly.

“He’s had things too easy for him. I’ve been much too indulgent. There’s never been a thing he wanted that I haven’t given him. I’ll learn him.”

The Blands had a discreet apprehension of the uses of advertisement and I gathered from the papers that the celebrations at Tilby of George’s twenty-first birthday were conducted in accordance with the usage of English county families. There was a dinner-party and a ball for the gentry and a collation and a dance in marquees on the lawn for the tenants. Expensive bands were brought down from London. In the illustrated papers were pictures of George surrounded by his family being presented with a solid silver tea-set by the tenantry. They had subscribed to have his portrait painted, but since his absence from the country had made it impossible for him to sit, the tea-service had been substituted. I read in the columns of the gossip writers that his father had given him a hunter, his mother a gramophone that changed its own records, his grandmother the dowager Lady Bland an Encyclopaedia Britannica, and his great-uncle Ferdinand Rabenstein a Virgin and Child by Pellegrino da Modena. I could not help observing that these gifts were bulky and not readily convertible into cash. From Ferdy’s presence at the festivities I concluded that George’s unaccountable vagary had effected a reconciliation between uncle and nephew. I was right. Ferdy did not at all like the notion of his great-nephew becoming a professional pianist. At the first hint of danger to its prestige the family drew together and a united front was presented to oppose George’s designs. Since I was not there I only know from hearsay what happened when the birthday celebrations were over. Ferdy told me something and so did Muriel, and later George gave me his version. The Blands had very much the impression that when George came home and found himself occupying the centre of the stage, when, surrounded by splendour, he saw for himself once more how much it meant to be the heir of a great estate, he would weaken. They surrounded him with love. They flattered him. They hung on his words. They counted on the goodness of his heart and thought that if they were very kind to him he would not have the courage to cause them pain. They seemed to take it for granted that he had no intention of going back to Germany and in conversation included him in all their plans. George did not say very much. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He did not open a piano. Things looked as though they were going very well. Peace descended on the troubled house. Then one day at luncheon when they were discussing a garden-party to which they had all been asked for one day of the following week, George said pleasantly:

“Don’t count on me. I shan’t be here.”

“Oh, George, why not?” asked his mother.

“I must get back to my work. I’m leaving for Munich on Monday.”

There was an awful pause. Everyone looked for something to say, but was afraid of saying the wrong thing, and at last it seemed impossible to break it. Luncheon was finished in silence. Then George went into the garden and the others, old Lady Bland and Ferdy, Muriel and Sir Adolphus, into the morning-room. There was a family council. Muriel wept. Freddy flew into a temper. Presently from the drawing-room they heard the sound of someone playing a nocturne of Chopin. It was George. It was as though now he had announced his decision he had gone for comfort, rest, and strength to the instrument he loved. Freddy sprang to his feet.

“Stop that noise,” he cried. “I won’t have him play the piano in my house.”

Muriel rang for a servant and gave him a message.

“Will you tell Mr Bland that her ladyship has a bad headache and would he mind not playing the piano.”

Ferdy, the man of the world, was deputed to have a talk with George. He was authorized to make him certain promises if he would give up the idea of becoming a pianist. If he did not wish to go into the diplomatic service his father would not insist, but if he would stand for Parliament he was prepared to pay his election expenses, give him a flat in London, and make him an allowance of five thousand a year. I must say it was a handsome offer. I do not know what Ferdy said to the boy. I suppose he painted to him the life that a young man could lead in London on such an income. I am sure he made it very alluring. It availed nothing. All George asked was five pounds a week to be able to continue his studies and to be left alone. He was indifferent to the position that he might some day enjoy. He didn’t want to hunt. He didn’t want to shoot. He didn’t want to be a Member of Parliament. He didn’t want to be a millionaire. He didn’t want to be a baronet. He didn’t want to be a peer. Ferdy left him defeated and in a state of considerable exasperation.

After dinner that evening there was a battle royal. Freddy was a quick-tempered man, unused to opposition, and he gave George the rough side of his tongue. I gather that it was very rough indeed. The women who sought to restrain his violence were sternly silenced. Perhaps for the first time in his life Freddy would not listen to his mother. George was obstinate and sullen. He had made up his mind and if his father didn’t like it he could lump it. Freddy was peremptory. He forbade George to go back to Germany. George answered that he was twenty-one and his own master. He would go where he chose. Freddy swore he would not give him a penny.

“All right, I’ll earn money.”

“You! You’ve never done a stroke of work in your life. What do you expect to do to earn money?”

“Sell old clothes,” grinned George.

There was a gasp from all of them. Muriel was so taken aback that she said a stupid thing.

“Like a Jew?”

“Well, aren’t I a Jew? And aren’t you a Jewess and isn’t daddy a Jew? We’re all Jews, the whole gang of us, and everyone knows it and what the hell’s the good of pretending we’re not?”

Then a very dreadful thing happened. Freddy burst suddenly into tears. I’m afraid he didn’t behave very much like Sir Adolphus Bland, Bart, M.P., and the good old English gentleman he so much wanted to be, but like an emotional Adolf Bleikogel who loved his son and wept with mortification because the great hopes he had set on him were brought to nothing and the ambition of his life was frustrated. He cried noisily with great loud sobs and pulled his beard and beat his breast and rocked to and fro. Then they all began to cry, old Lady Bland and Muriel, and Ferdy, who sniffed and blew his nose and wiped the tears streaming down his face, and even George cried. Of course it was very painful, but to our rough Anglo-Saxon temperament I am afraid it must seem also a trifle ridiculous. No one tried to console anybody else. They just sobbed and sobbed. It broke up the party.

But it had no result on the situation. George remained obdurate. His father would not speak to him. There were more scenes. Muriel sought to excite his pity; he was deaf to her piteous entreaties, he did not seem to mind if he broke her heart, he did not care two hoots if he killed his father. Ferdy appealed to him as a sportsman and a man of the world. George was flippant and indeed personally offensive. Old Lady Bland with her guttural German accent and strong common sense argued with him, but he would not listen to reason. It was she, however, who at last found a way out. She made George acknowledge that it was no use to throw away all the beautiful things the world laid at his feet unless he had talent. Of course he thought he had, but he might be mistaken. It was not worth while to be a second-rate pianist. His only excuse, his only justification, was genius. If he had genius his family had no right to stand in his way.

“You can’t expect me to show genius already,” said George. “I shall have to work for years.”

“Are you sure you are prepared for that?”

“It’s my only wish in the world. I’ll work like a dog. I only want to be given my chance.”

This was the proposition she made. His father was determined to give him nothing and obviously they could not let the boy starve. He had mentioned five pounds a week. Well, she was willing to give him that herself. He could go back to Germany and study for two years. At the end of that time he must come back and they would get some competent and disinterested person to hear him play, and if then that person said he showed promise of becoming a first-rate pianist no further obstacles would be placed in his way. He would be given every advantage, help, and encouragement. If on the other hand that person decided that his natural gifts were not such as to ensure ultimate success he must promise faithfully to give up all thoughts of making music his profession and in every way accede to his father’s wishes. George could hardly believe his ears.

“Do you mean that, Granny?”

“I do.”

“But will daddy agree?”

“I vill see dat he does,” she answered.

George seized her in his arms and impetuously kissed her on both cheeks.

“Darling,” he cried. “Ah, but de promise?”

He gave her his solemn word of honour that he would faithfully abide by the terms of the arrangement. Two days later he went back to Germany. Though his father consented unwillingly to his going, and indeed could not help doing so, he would not be reconciled to him and when he left refused to say good-bye to him.

I imagine that in no manner could he have caused himself such pain. I permit myself a trite remark. It is strange that men, inhabitants for so short a while of an alien and inhuman world, should go out of their way to cause themselves so much unhappiness.

George had stipulated that during his two years of study his family should not visit him, so that when Muriel heard some months before he was due to come home that I was passing through Munich on my way to Vienna, whither business called me, it was not unnatural that she should ask me to look him up. She was anxious to have first-hand information about him. She gave me

George’s address and I wrote ahead, telling him I was spending a day in Munich, and asked him to lunch with me. His answer awaited me at the hotel. He said he worked all day and could not spare the time to lunch with me, but if I would come to his studio about six he would like to show me that and if I had nothing better to do would love to spend the evening with me. So soon after six I went to the address he gave me. He lived on the second floor of a large block of flats and when I came to his door I heard the sound of piano-playing. It stopped when I rang and George opened the door for me. I hardly recognized him. He had grown very fat. His hair was extremely long, it curled all over his head in picturesque confusion; and he had certainly not shaved for three days. He wore a grimy pair of Oxford bags, a tennis shirt, and slippers. He was not very clean and his finger-nails were rimmed with black. It was a startling change from the spruce, slim youth so elegantly dressed in such beautiful clothes that I had last seen. I could not but think it would be a shock to Ferdy to see him now. The studio was large and bare; on the walls were three or four unframed canvases of a highly cubist nature, there were several arm-chairs much the worse for wear, and a grand piano. Books were littered about and old newspapers and art magazines. It was dirty and untidy and there was a frowzy smell of stale beer and stale smoke.

“Do you live here alone?” I asked.

“Yes, I have a woman who comes in twice a week and cleans up. But I make my own breakfast and lunch.”

“Can you cook?”

“Oh, I only have bread and cheese and a bottle of beer for lunch. I dine at a Bierstube.”

It was pleasant to discover that he was very glad to see me. He seemed in great spirits and extremely happy. He asked after his relations and we talked of one thing and another. He had a lesson twice a week and for the rest of the time practised. He told me that he worked ten hours a day.

“That’s a change,” I said.

He laughed.

“Daddy said I was born tired. I wasn’t really lazy. I didn’t see the use of working at things that bored me.”

I asked him how he was getting on with the piano. He seemed to be satisfied with his progress and I begged him to play to me.

“Oh, not now, I’m all in, I’ve been at it all day. Let’s go out and dine and come back here later and then I’ll play. I generally go to the same place, there are several students I know there, and it’s rather fun.”

Presently we set out. He put on socks and shoes and a very old golf coat, and we walked together through the wide quiet streets. It was a brisk cold day. His step was buoyant. He looked round him with a sigh of delight.

“I love Munich,” he said. “It’s the only city in the world where there’s art in the very air you breathe. After all, art is the only thing that matters, isn’t it? I loathe the idea of going home.”

“All the same I’m afraid you’ll have to.”

“I know. I’ll go all right, but I’m not going to think about it till the time comes.”

“When you do, you might do worse than get a haircut. If you don’t mind my saying so you look almost too artistic to be convincing.”

“You English, you’re such Philistines,” he said.

He took me to a rather large restaurant in a side street, crowded even at that early hour with people dining, and furnished heavily in the German medieval style. A table covered with a red cloth, well away from the air, was reserved for George and his friends and when we went to it four or five youths were at it. There was a Pole studying Oriental languages, a student of philosophy, a painter (I suppose the author of George’s cubist pictures), a Swede, and a young man who introduced himself to me, clicking his heels, as Hans Reiting, Dichter, namely Hans Reiting, poet. Not one of them was more than twenty-two and I felt a trifle out of it. They all addressed George as du and I noticed that his German was extremely fluent. I had not spoken it for some time and mine was rusty, so that I could not take much part in the lively conversation. But nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed myself. They ate sparingly, but drank a good deal of beer. They talked of art and women. They were very revolutionary and though gay very much in earnest. They were contemptuous of everyone you had ever heard of, and the only point on which they all agreed was that in this topsy-turvy world only the vulgar could hope for success. They argued points of technique with animation, and contradicted one another, and shouted and were obscene. They had a grand time.

At about eleven George and I walked back to his studio. Munich is a city that frolics demurely and except about the Marienplatz the streets were still and empty. When we got in he took off his coat and said:

“Now I’ll play to you.”

I sat in one of the dilapidated arm-chairs and a broken spring stuck into my behind, but I made myself as comfortable as I could. George played Chopin. I know very little of music and that is one of the reasons for which I have found this story difficult to write. When I go to a concert at the Queen’s Hall and in the intervals read the programme it is all Greek to me. I know nothing of harmony and counterpoint. I shall never forget how humiliated I felt once when, having come to Munich for a Wagner festival, I went to a wonderful performance of Tristan und Isolde and never heard a note of it. The first few bars sent me off and I began to think of what I was writing, my characters leapt into life and I heard their long conversations, I suffered their pains and was a party to their joy; the years swept by and all sorts of things happened to me, the spring brought me its rapture and in the winter I was cold and hungry; and I loved and I hated and I died. I suppose there were intervals in which I walked round and round the garden and probably ate Schinken-Brodchen and drank beer, but I have no recollection of them. The only thing I know is that when the curtain for the last time fell I woke with a start. I had had a wonderful time, but I could not help thinking it was very stupid of me to come such a long way and spend so much money if I couldn’t pay attention to what I heard and saw.

I knew most of the things George played. They were the familiar pieces of concert programmes. He played with a great deal of dash. Then he played Beethoven’s Appassionata. I used to play it myself when I played the piano (very badly) in my far distant youth and I still knew every note of it. Of course it is a classic and a great work, it would be foolish to deny it, but I confess that at this time of day it leaves me cold. It is like Paradise Lost, splendid, but a trifle stolid. This too George played with vigour. He sweated profusely. At first I could not make out what was the matter with his playing, something did not seem to me quite right, and then it struck me that the two hands did not exactly synchronize, so that there was ever so slight an interval between the bass and the treble; but I repeat, I am ignorant of these things; what disconcerted me might have been merely the effect of his having drunk a good deal of beer that evening or indeed only my fancy. I said all I could think of to praise him.

“Of course I know I need a lot more work. I’m only a beginner, but I know I can do it. I feel it in my bones. It’ll take me ten years, but then I shall be a pianist.”

He was tired and came away from the piano. It was after midnight and I suggested going, but he would not hear of it. He opened a couple of bottles of beer and lit his pipe. He wanted to talk.

“Are you happy here?” I asked him.

“Very,” he answered gravely. “I’d like to stay for ever. I’ve never had such fun in my life. This evening, for instance. Wasn’t it grand?”

“It was very jolly. But one can’t go on leading the student’s life. Your friends here will grow older and go away.”

“Others’ll come. There are always students here and people like that.”

“Yes, but you’ll grow older too. Is there anything more lamentable than the middle-aged man who tries to go on living the undergraduate’s life? The old fellow who wants to be a boy among boys, and tries to persuade himself that they’ll accept him as one of themselves-how ridiculous he is. It can’t be done.”

“I feel so at home here. My poor father wants me to be an English gentleman. It gives me gooseflesh. I’m not a sportsman. I don’t care a damn for hunting and shooting and playing cricket. I was only acting.”

“You gave a very natural performance.”

“It wasn’t till I came here that I knew it wasn’t real. I loved Eton, and Oxford was a riot, but all the same I knew I didn’t belong. I played the part all right, because acting’s in my blood, but there was always something in me that wasn’t satisfied. The house in Grosvenor Square is a freehold and daddy paid a hundred and eighty thousand pounds for Tilby; I don’t know if you understand what I mean, I felt they were just furnished houses we’d taken for the season and one of these days we’d pack up and the real owners would come back.”

I listened to him attentively, but I wondered how much he was describing what he had obscurely felt and how much he imagined now in his changed circumstances that he had felt.

“I used to hate hearing great-uncle Ferdy tell his Jewish stories. I thought it so damned mean. I understand now; it was a safety valve. My God, the strain of being a man about town. It’s easier for daddy, he can play the old English squire at Tilby, but in the City he can be himself. He’s all right. I’ve taken the make-up off and my stage clothes and at last I can be my real self too. What a relief! You know, I don’t like English people. I never really know where I am with you. You’re so dull and conventional. You never let yourselves go. There’s no freedom in you, freedom of the soul, and you’re such funks. There’s nothing in the world you’re so frightened of as doing the wrong thing.”

“Don’t forget that you’re English yourself, George,” I murmured.

He laughed.

“I? I’m not English. I haven’t got a drop of English blood in me. I’m a Jew and you know it, and a German Jew into the bargain. I don’t want to be English. I want to be a Jew. My friends are Jews. You don’t know how much more easy I feel with them. I can be myself. We did everything we could to avoid Jews at home; Mummy, because she was blonde, thought she could get away with it and pretended she was a Gentile. What rot! D’you know, I have a lot of fun wandering about the Jewish parts of Munich and looking at the people. I went to Frankfort once, there are a lot of them there, and I walked about and looked at the frowzy old men with their hooked noses and the fat women with their false hair. I felt such a sympathy for them, I felt I belonged to them, I could have kissed them. When they looked at me I wondered if they knew that I was one of them. I wish to God I knew Yiddish. I’d like to become friends with them, and go into their houses and eat Kosher food and all that sort of thing. I wanted to go to a synagogue, but I was afraid I’d do the wrong thing and be kicked out. I like the smell of the Ghetto and the sense of life, and the mystery and the dust and the squalor and the romance. I shall never get the longing for it out of my head now. That’s the real thing. All the rest is only pretence.”

“You’ll break your father’s heart,” I said.

“It’s his or mine. Why can’t he let me go? There’s Harry. Harry would love to be squire of Tilby. He’d be an English gentleman all right. You know, mummy’s set her heart on my marrying a Christian. Harry would love to. He’ll found the good old English family all right. After all, I ask so little. I only want five pounds a week, and they can keep the title and the park and the Gainsboroughs and the whole bag of tricks.”

“Well, the fact remains that you gave your solemn word of honour to go back after two years.”

“I’ll go back all right,” he said sullenly. “Lea Makart has promised to come and hear me play.”

“What’ll you do if she says you’re no good?”

“Shoot myself,” he said gaily.

“What nonsense,” I answered in the same tone.

“Do you feel at home in England?”

“No,” I said, “but then I don’t feel at home anywhere else.”

But he was quite naturally not interested in me.

“I loathe the idea of going back. Now that I know what life has to offer I wouldn’t be an English country gentleman for anything in the world. My God, the boredom of it!”

“Money’s a very nice thing and I’ve always understood it’s very pleasant to be an English peer.”

“Money means nothing to me. I want none of the things it can buy, and I don’t happen to be a snob.”

It was growing very late and I had to get up early next day. It seemed unnecessary for me to pay too much attention to what George said. It was the sort of nonsense a young man might very well indulge in when thrown suddenly among painters and poets. Art is strong wine and needs a strong head to carry it. The divine fire burns most efficiently in those who temper its fury with horse sense. After all, George was not twenty-three yet. Time teaches. And when all was said and done his future was no concern of mine. I bade him good night and walked back to my hotel. The stars were shining in the indifferent sky. I left Munich in the morning.

I did not tell Muriel on my return to London what George had said to me, or what he looked like, but contented myself with assuring her that he was well and happy, working very hard, and seemed to be leading a virtuous and sober life. Six months later he came home. Muriel asked me to go down to Tilby for the week-end; Ferdy was bringing Lea Makart to hear George play and he particularly wished me to be there. I accepted. Muriel met me at the station.

“How did you find George?” I asked.

“He’s very fat, but he seems in great spirits. I think he’s pleased to be back again. He’s been very sweet to his father.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“Oh, my dear, I do hope Lea Makart will say he’s no good. It’ll be such a relief to all of us.”

“I’m afraid it’ll be a terrible disappointment to him.”

“Life is full of disappointments,” said Muriel crisply. “But one learns to put up with them.”

I gave her a smile of amusement. We were sitting in a Rolls, and there was a footman as well as a chauffeur on the box. She wore a string of pearls that had probably cost forty thousand pounds. I recollected that in the birthday honours Sir Adolphus Bland had not been one of the three gentlemen on whom the King had been pleased to confer a peerage.

Lea Makart was able to make only a flying visit. She was playing that evening at Brighton and would motor over to Tilby on the Sunday morning for luncheon. She was returning to London the same day because she had a concert in Manchester on the Monday. George was to play in the course of the afternoon.

He’s practising very hard,” his mother told me. “That’s why he didn’t come with me to meet you.”

We turned in at the park gates and drove up the imposing avenue of elms that led to the house. I found that there was no party.

I met the dowager Lady Bland for the first time. I had always been curious to see her. I had had in my mind’s eye a somewhat sensational picture of an old, old Jewish woman who lived alone in her grand house in Portland Place, and, with a finger in every pie, ruled her family with a despotic hand. She did not disappoint me. She was of commanding presence, rather tall, and stout without being corpulent. Her countenance was markedly Hebraic. She wore a rather heavy moustache and a wig of a peculiarly metallic brown. Her dress was very grand, of black brocade, and she had a row of large diamond stars on her breast and round her neck a chain of diamonds. Diamond rings gleamed on her wrinkled hands. She spoke in a rather harsh voice and with a strong German accent. When I was introduced to her she fixed me with shining eyes. She summed me up with dispatch and to my fancy at all events made no attempt to conceal from me that the judgement she formed was unfavourable.

“You have known my brother Ferdinand for many years, is it not so?” she said, rolling a guttural R. “My brother Ferdinand has always moved in very good society. Where is Sir Adolphus, Muriel? Does he know your guest is arrived? And will you not send for George? If he does not know his pieces by now he will not know them by tomorrow.”

Muriel explained that Freddy was finishing a round of golf with his secretary and that she had had George told I was there. Lady Bland looked as though she thought Muriel’s replies highly unsatisfactory and turned again to me.

“My daughter-in-law tells me you have been in Italy?”

“Yes, I’ve only just come back.”

“It is a beautiful country. How is the King?”

I said I did not know.

“I used to know him when he was a little boy. He was not very strong then. His mother, Queen Margherita, was a great friend of mine. They thought he would never marry. The Duchess of Aosta was very angry when he fell in love with that Princess of Montenegro.”

She seemed to belong to some long-past period of history, but she was very alert and I imagine that little escaped her beady eyes. Freddy, very spruce in plus-fours, presently came in. It was amusing and yet a little touching to see this grey-bearded man, as a rule somewhat domineering, so obviously on his best behaviour with the old lady. He called her Mamma. Then George came in. He was as fat as ever, but he had taken my advice and had his hair cut; he was losing his boyish looks, but he was a powerful and well-set-up young man. It was good to see the pleasure he took in his tea. He ate quantities of sandwiches and great hunks of cake. He had still a boy’s appetite. His father watched him with a tender smile and as I looked at him I could not be surprised at the attachment which they all so obviously felt for him. He had an ingenuousness, a charm, and an enthusiasm which were certainly very pleasant. There was about him a generosity of demeanour, a frankness, and a natural cordiality which could not but make people take to him. I do not know whether it was owing to a hint from his grandmother or merely of his own good nature, but it was plain that he was going out of his way to be nice to his father; and in his father’s soft eyes, in the way he hung upon the boy’s words, in his pleased, proud, and happy look, you felt how bitterly the estrangement of the last two years had weighed on him. He adored George.

We played golf in the morning, a three-ball match, since Muriel, having to go to Mass, could not join us, and at one Ferdy arrived in Lea Makart’s car. We sat down to luncheon. Of course Lea Makart’s reputation was well known to me. She was acknowledged to be the greatest woman pianist in Europe. She was a very old friend of Ferdy’s, who with his interest and patronage had greatly helped her at the beginning of her career, and it was he who had arranged for her to come and give her opinion of George’s chances. At one time I went as often as I could to hear her play. She had no affectations; she played as a bird sings, without any appearance of effort, very naturally, and the silvery notes dripped from her light fingers in a curiously spontaneous manner, so that it gave you the impression that she was improvising those complicated rhythms. They used to tell me that her technique was wonderful. I could never make up my mind how much the delight her playing gave me was due to her person. In those days she was the most ethereal thing you could imagine, and it was surprising that a creature so sylphlike should be capable of so much power. She was very slight, pale, with enormous eyes and magnificent black hair, and at the piano she had a childlike wistfulness that was most appealing. She was very beautiful in a hardly human way and when she played, a little smile on her closed lips, she seemed to be remembering things she had heard in another world. Now, however, a woman in the early forties, she was sylphlike no more; she was stout and her face had broadened; she had no longer that lovely remoteness, but the authority of her long succession of triumphs. She was brisk, business-like, and somewhat overwhelming. Her vitality lit her with a natural spotlight as his sanctity surrounds the saint with a halo. She was not interested in anything very much but her own affairs, but since she had humour and knew the world she was able to invest them with gaiety. She held the conversation, but did not absorb it. George talked little. Every now and then she gave him a glance, but did not try to draw him in. I was the only Gentile at the table. All but old Lady Bland spoke perfect English, yet I could not help feeling that they did not speak like English people; I think they rounded their vowels more than we do, they certainly spoke louder, and the words seemed not to fall, but to gush from their lips. I think if I had been in another room where I could hear the tone but not the words of their speech I should have thought it was in a foreign language that they were conversing. The effect was slightly disconcerting.

Lea Makart wished to set out for London at about six, so it was arranged that George should play at four. Whatever the result of the audition, I felt that I, a stranger in the circle which her departure must render exclusively domestic, would be in the way and so, pretending an early engagement in town next morning, I asked her if she would take me with her in her car.

At a little before four we all wandered into the drawing-room. Old Lady Bland sat on a sofa with Ferdy; Freddy, Muriel, and I made ourselves comfortable in arm-chairs; and Lea Makart sat by herself. She chose instinctively a high-backed Jacobean chair that had somewhat the air of a throne, and in a yellow dress, with her olive skin, she looked very handsome. She had magnificent eyes. She was very much made up and her mouth was scarlet.

George gave no sign of nervousness. He was already seated at the piano when I went in with his father and mother, and he watched us quietly settling ourselves down. He gave me the shadow of a smile. When he saw that we were all at our ease he began to play. He played Chopin. He played two waltzes that were familiar to me, a polonaise and an etude. He played with a great deal of brio. I wish I knew music well enough to give an exact description of his playing. It had strength, and a youthful exuberance, but I felt that he missed what to me is the peculiar charm of Chopin, the tenderness, the nervous melancholy, the wistful gaiety and the slightly faded romance that reminds me always of an Early Victorian keepsake. And again I had the vague sensation, so slight that it almost escaped me, that the two hands did not quite synchronize. I looked at Ferdy and saw him give his sister a look of faint surprise. Muriel’s eyes were fixed on the pianist, but presently she dropped them and for the rest of the time stared at the floor. His father looked at him too, and his eyes were steadfast, but unless I was much mistaken he went pale and his face betrayed something like dismay. Music was in the blood of all of them, all their lives they had heard the greatest pianists in the world, and they judged with instinctive precision. The only person whose face betrayed no emotion was Lea Makart. She listened very attentively. She was as still as an image in a niche.

At last he stopped and turning round on his seat faced her. He did not speak.

“What is it you want me to tell you?” she asked.

They looked into one another’s eyes.

“I want you to tell me whether I have any chance of becoming in time a pianist in the first rank.”

“Not in a thousand years.”

For a moment there was dead silence. Freddy’s head sank and he looked down at the carpet at his feet. His wife put out her hand and took his. But George continued to look steadily at Lea Makart.

“Ferdy has told me the circumstances,” she said at last. “Don’t think I’m influenced by them. Nothing of this is very important.” She made a great sweeping gesture that took in the magnificent room with the beautiful things it contained and all of us. “If I thought you had in you the makings of an artist I shouldn’t hesitate to beseech you to give up everything for art’s sake. Art is the only thing that matters. In comparison with art, wealth and rank and power are not worth a straw.” She gave us a look so sincere that it was void of insolence. “We are the only people who count. We give the world significance. You are only our raw material.”

I was not too pleased to be included with the rest under that heading, but that is neither here nor there.

“Of course I can see that you’ve worked very hard. Don’t think it’s been wasted. It will always be a pleasure to you to be able to play the piano and it will enable you to appreciate great playing as no ordinary person can hope to do. Look at your hands. They’re not a pianist’s hands.”

Involuntarily I glanced at George’s hands. I had never noticed them before. I was astounded to see how podgy they were and how short and stumpy the fingers.

“Your ear is not quite perfect. I don’t think you can ever hope to be more than a very competent amateur. In art the difference between the amateur and the professional is immeasurable.”

George did not reply. Except for his pallor no one would have known that he was listening to the blasting of all his hopes. The silence that fell was quite awful. Lea Makart’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“But don’t take my opinion alone,” she said. “After all, I’m not infallible. Ask somebody else. You know how good and generous Paderewski is. I’ll write to him about you and you can go down and play to him. I’m sure he’ll hear you.”

George now gave a little smile. He had very good manners and whatever he was feeling did not want to make the situation too difficult for others.

“I don’t think that’s necessary, I am content to accept your verdict. To tell you the truth it’s not so very different from my master’s in Munich.”

He got up from the piano and lit a cigarette. It eased the strain. The others moved a little in their chairs. Lea Makart smiled at George.

“Shall I play to you?” she said.

“Yes, do.”

She got up and went to the piano. She took off the rings with which her fingers were laden. She played Bach. I do not know the names of the pieces, but I recognized the stiff ceremonial of the frenchified little German courts and the sober, thrifty comfort of the burghers, and the dancing on the village green, the green trees that looked like Christmas trees, and the sunlight on the wide German country, and a tender cosiness; and in my nostrils there was a warm scent of the soil and I was conscious of a sturdy strength that seemed to have its roots deep in mother earth, and of an elemental power that was timeless and had no home in space. She played beautifully, with a soft brilliance that made you think of the full moon shining at dusk in the summer sky. With another part of me I watched the others and I saw how intensely they were conscious of the experience. They were rapt. I wished with all my heart that I could get from music the wonderful exaltation that possessed them. She stopped, a smile hovered on her lips, and she put on her rings. George gave a little chuckle.

“That clinches it, I fancy,” he said.

The servants brought in tea and after tea Lea Makart and I bade the company farewell and got into the car. We drove up to London. She talked all the way, if not brilliantly at all events with immense gusto; she told me of her early years in Manchester and of the struggle of her beginnings. She was very interesting. She never even mentioned George; the episode was of no consequence, it was finished and she thought of it no more.

We little knew what was happening at Tilby. When we left George went out on the terrace and presently his father joined him. Freddy had won the day, but he was not happy. With his more than feminine sensitiveness he felt all that George was feeling, and George’s anguish simply broke his heart. He had never loved his son more than then. When he appeared George greeted him with a little smile. Freddy’s voice broke. In a sudden and overwhelming emotion he found it in him to surrender the fruits of his victory.

“Look here, old boy,” he said, “I can’t bear to think that you’ve had such a disappointment. Would you like to go back to Munich for another year and then see?”

George shook his head.

“No, it wouldn’t be any good. I’ve had my chance. Let’s call it a day.”

“Try not to take it too hard.”

“You see, the only thing in the world I want is to be a pianist. And there’s nothing doing. It’s a bit thick if you come to think of it.”

George, trying so hard to be brave, smiled wanly.

“Would you like to go round the world? You can get one of your Oxford pals to go with you and I’ll pay all the expenses. You’ve been working very hard for a long time.”

“Thanks awfully, daddy, we’ll talk about it. I’m just going for a stroll now.”

“Shall I come with you?”

“I’d rather go alone.”

Then George did a strange thing. He put his arm round his father’s neck, and kissed him on the lips. He gave a funny little moved laugh and walked away. Freddy went back to the drawing-room. His mother, Ferdy, and Muriel were sitting there.

“Freddy, why don’t you marry the boy?” said the old lady. “He is twenty-three. It would take his mind off his troubles and when he is married and has a baby he will soon settle down like everybody else.”

“Whom is he to marry, mamma?” asked Sir Adolphus, smiling.

“That’s not so difficult. Lady Frielinghausen came to see me the other day with her daughter Violet. She is a very nice maiden and she will have money of her own. Lady Frielinghausen gave me to understand that her Sir Jacob would come down very handsome if Violet made a good match.”

Muriel flushed.

“I hate Lady Frielinghausen. George is much too young to marry. He can afford to marry anyone he likes.”

Old Lady Bland gave her daughter a strange look.

“You are a very foolish girl, Miriam,” she said, using the name Muriel had long discarded. “As long as I am here I shall not allow you to commit a foolishness.”

She knew as well as if Muriel had said it in so many words that she wanted George to marry a Gentile, but she knew also that so long as she was alive neither Freddy nor his wife would dare to suggest it.

But George did not go for a walk. Perhaps because the shooting season was about to open he took it into his head to go into the gun-room. He began to clean the gun that his mother had given him on his twentieth birthday. No one had used it since he went to Germany. Suddenly the servants were startled by a report. When they went into the gun-room they found George lying on the floor shot through the heart. Apparently the gun had been loaded and George while playing about with it had accidentally shot himself. One reads of such accidents in the paper often.

THE VESSEL OF WRATH

THERE are few books in the world that contain more meat than the Sailing Directions published by the Hydrographic Department by order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. They are handsome volumes, bound (very flimsily) in cloth of different colours, and the most expensive of them is cheap. For four shillings you can buy the Yangtse Kiang Pilot, “containing a description of, and sailing directions for, the Yangtse Kiang from the Wusung river to the highest navigable point, including the Han Kiang, the Kialing Kiang, and the Min Kiang’; and for three shillings you can get Part III of the Eastern Archipelago Pilot, “comprising the N.E. end of Celebes, Molucca and Gilolo passages, Banda and Arafura Seas, and North, West, and South-West coasts of New Guinea’. But it is not very safe to do so if you are a creature of settled habits that you have no wish to disturb or if you have an occupation that holds you fast to one place. These business-like books take you upon enchanted journeys of the spirit; and their matter-of-fact style, the admirable order, the concision with which the material is set before you, the stern sense or the practical that informs every line, cannot dim the poetry that, like the spice-laden breeze that assails your senses with a more than material languor when you approach some of those magic islands of the Eastern seas, blows with so sweet a fragrance through the printed pages. They tell you the anchorages and the landing places, what supplies you can get at each spot, and where you can get water; they tell you the lights and buoys, tides, winds, and weather that you will find there. They give you brief information about the population and the trade. And it is strange when you think how sedately it is all set down, with no words wasted, that so much else is given you besides. What? Well, mystery and beauty, romance and the glamour of the unknown. It is no common book that offers you casually turning its pages such a paragraph as this: “Supplies. A few jungle fowl are preserved, the island is also the resort of vast numbers of sea birds. Turtle are found in the lagoon, as well as quantities of various fish, including grey mullet, shark, and dog-fish; the seine cannot be used with any effect; but there is a fish which may be taken on a rod. A small store of tinned provisions and spirits is kept in a hut for the relief of shipwrecked persons. Good water may be obtained from a well near the landing-place.” Can the imagination want more material than this to go on a journey through time and space?

In the volume from which I have copied this passage, the compilers with the same restraint have described the Alas Islands. They are composed of a group or chain of islands, “for the most part low and wooded, extending about 75 miles east and west, and 40 miles north and south’. The information about them, you are told, is very slight; there are channels between the different groups, and several vessels have passed through them, but the passages have not been thoroughly explored, and the positions of many of the dangers not yet determined; it is therefore advisable to avoid them. The population of the group is estimated at about 8,000, of whom 200 are Chinese and 400 Mohammedans. The rest are heathen. The principal island is called Baru, it is surrounded by a reef, and here lives a Dutch Controleur. His white house with its red roof on the top of a little hill is the most prominent object that the vessels of the Royal Netherlands Steam Packet Company see when every other month on their way up to Macassar and every four weeks on their way down to Merauke in Dutch New Guinea they touch at the island.

At a certain moment of the world’s history the Controleur was Mynheer Evert Gruyter and he ruled the people who inhabited the Alas Islands with firmness tempered by a keen sense of the ridiculous. He had thought it a very good joke to be placed at the age of twenty-seven in a position of such consequence, and at thirty he was still amused by it. There was no cable communication between his islands and Batavia, and the mail arrived after so long a delay that even if he asked advice, by the time he received it, it was useless, and so he equably did what he thought best and trusted to his good fortune to keep out of trouble with the authorities. He was very short, not more than five feet four in height, and extremely fat; he was of a florid complexion. For coolness’ sake he kept his head shaved and his face was hairless. It was round and red. His eyebrows were so fair that you hardly saw them; and he had little twinkling blue eyes. He knew that he had no dignity, but for the sake of his position made up for it by dressing very dapperly. He never went to his office, nor sat in court, nor walked abroad but in spotless white. His stengahshifter, with its bright brass buttons, fitted him very tightly and displayed the shocking fact that, young though he was, he had a round and protruding belly. His good-humoured face shone with sweat and he constantly fanned himself with a palm-leaf fan.

But in his house Mr Gruyter preferred to wear nothing but a sarong and then with his white podgy little body he looked like a fat funny boy of sixteen. He was an early riser and his breakfast was always ready for him at six. It never varied. It consisted of a slice of papaia, three cold fried eggs, Edam cheese, sliced thin, and a cup of black coffee. When he had eaten it, he smoked a large Dutch cigar, read the papers if he had not read them through and through already, and then dressed to go down to his office.

One morning while he was thus occupied his head boy came into his bedroom and told him that Tuan Jones wanted to know if he could see him. Mr Gruyter was standing in front of a looking-glass. He had his trousers on and was admiring his smooth chest. He arched his back in order to throw it out and throw in his belly and with a good deal of satisfaction gave his breast three or four resounding slaps. It was a manly chest. When the boy brought the message he looked at his own eyes in the mirror and exchanged a slightly ironic smile with them. He asked himself what the devil his visitor could want. Evert Gruyter spoke English, Dutch, and Malay with equal facility, but he thought in Dutch. He liked to do this. It seemed to him a pleasantly ribald language.

“Ask the tuan to wait and say I shall come directly.” He put on his tunic, over his naked body, buttoned it up, and strutted into the sitting-room. The Rev. Owen Jones got up.

“Good morning, Mr Jones,” said the Controleur. “Have you come in to have a peg with me before I start my day’s work?”

Mr Jones did not smile.

“I’ve come to see you upon a very distressing matter, Mr Gruyter,” he answered.

The Controleur was not disconcerted by his visitor’s gravity nor depressed by his words. His little blue eyes beamed amiably.

“Sit down, my dear fellow, and have a cigar.”

Mr Gruyter knew quite well that the Rev. Owen Jones neither drank nor smoked, but it tickled something prankish in his nature to offer him a drink and a smoke whenever they met. Mr Jones shook his head.

Mr Jones was in charge of the Baptist Mission on the Alas Islands. His headquarters were at Baru, the largest of them, with the greatest population, but he had meeting-houses under the care of native helpers in several other islands of the group. He was a tall, thin, melancholy man, with a long face, sallow and drawn, of about forty. His brown hair was already white on the temples and it receded from the forehead. This gave him a look of somewhat vacuous intellectuality. Mr Gruyter both disliked and respected him. He disliked him because he was narrow-minded and dogmatic. Himself a cheerful pagan who liked the good things of the flesh and was determined to get as many of them as his circumstances permitted, he had no patience with a man who disapproved of them all. He thought the customs of the country suited its inhabitants and had no patience with the missionary’s energetic efforts to destroy a way of life that for centuries had worked very well. He respected him because he was honest, zealous, and good. Mr Jones, an Australian of Welsh descent, was the only qualified doctor in the group and it was a comfort to know that if you fell ill you need not rely only on a Chinese practitioner, and none knew better than the Controleur how useful to all Mr Jones’s skill had been and with what charity he had given it. On the occasion of an epidemic of influenza the missionary had done the work of ten men and no storm short of a typhoon could prevent him from crossing to one island or another if his help was needed.

He lived with his sister in a little white house about half a mile from the village, and when the Controleur had arrived came on board to meet him and begged him to stay till he could get his own house in order. The Controleur had accepted and soon saw for himself with what simplicity the couple lived. It was more than he could stand. Tea at three sparse meals a day, and when he lit his cigar Mr Jones politely but firmly asked him to be good enough not to smoke, since both his sister and he strongly disapproved of it. In twenty-four hours Mr Gruyter moved into his own house. He fled, with panic in his heart, as though from a plague-stricken city. The Controleur was fond of a joke and he liked to laugh; to be with a man who took your nonsense in deadly earnest and never even smiled at your best story was more than flesh and blood could stand. The Rev. Owen Jones was a worthy man, but as a companion he was impossible. His sister was worse. Neither had a sense of humour, but whereas the missionary was of a melancholy turn, doing his duty so conscientiously, with the obvious conviction that everything in the world was hopeless, Miss Jones was resolutely cheerful. She grimly looked on the bright side of things. With the ferocity of an avenging angel she sought out the good in her fellow-men. Miss Jones taught in the mission school and helped her brother in his medical work. When he did operations she gave the anaesthetic and was matron, dresser, and nurse of the tiny hospital which on his own initiative Mr Jones had added to the mission. But the Controleur was an obstinate little fellow and he never lost his capacity of extracting amusement from the Rev. Owen’s dour struggle with the infirmities of human nature, and Miss Jones’s ruthless optimism. He had to get his fun where he could. The Dutch boats came in three times in two months for a few hours and then he could have a good old crack with the captain and chief engineer, and once in a blue moon a pearling lugger came in from Thursday Island or Port Darwin and for two or three days he had a grand time. They were rough fellows, the pearlers, for the most part, but they were full of guts, and they had plenty of liquor on board, and good stories to tell, and the Controleur had them up to his house and gave them a fine dinner, and the party was only counted a success if they were all too drunk to get back on the lugger again that night. But beside the missionary the only white man who lived on Baru was Ginger Ted, and he, of course, was a disgrace to civilization. There was not a single thing to be said in his favour. He cast discredit on the white race. All the same, but for Ginger Ted the Controleur sometimes thought he would find life on the island of Baru almost more than he could bear.

Oddly enough it was on account of this scamp that Mr Jones, when he should have been instructing the pagan young in the mysteries of the Baptist faith, was paying Mr Gruyter this early visit.

“Sit down, Mr Jones,” said the Controleur. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’ve come to see you about the man they call Ginger Ted. What are you going to do now?”

“Why, what’s happened?”

“Haven’t you heard? I thought the sergeant would have told you.”

“I don’t encourage the members of my staff to come to my private house unless the matter is urgent,” said the Controleur rather grandly. “I am unlike you, Mr Jones, I only work in order to have leisure, and I like to enjoy my leisure without disturbance.”

But Mr Jones did not care much for small talk and he was not interested in general reflections.

“There was a disgraceful row in one of the Chinese shops last night. Ginger Ted wrecked the place and half killed a Chinaman.”

“Drunk again, I suppose,” said the Controleur placidly.

“Naturally. When is he anything else? They sent for the police and he assaulted the sergeant. They had to have six men to get him to the jail.”

“He’s a hefty fellow,” said the Controleur.

“I suppose you’ll send him to Macassar.”

Evert Gruyter returned the missionary’s outraged look with a merry twinkle. He was no fool and he knew already what Mr Jones was up to. It gave him considerable amusement to tease him a little.

“Fortunately my powers are wide enough to enable me to deal with the situation myself,” he answered.

“You have power to deport anyone you like, Mr Gruyter, and I’m sure it would save a lot of trouble if you got rid of the man altogether.”

“I have the power of course, but I am sure you would be the last person to wish me to use it arbitrarily.”

“Mr Gruyter, the man’s presence here is a public scandal. He’s never sober from morning till night; it’s notorious that he has relations with one native woman after another.”

“That is an interesting point, Mr Jones. I had always heard that alcoholic excess, though it stimulated sexual desire, prevented its gratification. What you tell me about Ginger Ted does not seem to bear out this theory.”

The missionary flushed a dull red.

“These are physiological matters which at the moment I have no wish to go into,” he said, frigidly. “The behaviour of this man does incalculable damage to the prestige of the white race, and his example seriously hampers the efforts that are made in other quarters to induce the people of these islands to lead a less vicious life. He’s an out-and-out bad lot.”

“Pardon my asking, but have you made any attempts to reform him?”

“When he first drifted here I did my best to get in touch with him. He repelled all my advances. When there was that first trouble I went to him and talked to him straight from the shoulder. He swore at me.”

“No one has a greater appreciation than I of the excellent work that you and other missionaries do on these islands, but are you sure that you always exercise your calling with all the tact possible?”

The Controleur was rather pleased with this phrase. It was extremely courteous and yet contained a reproof that he thought worth administering. The missionary looked at him gravely. His sad brown eyes were full of sincerity.

“Did Jesus exercise tact when he took a whip and drove the money-changers from the Temple? No, Mr Gruyter. Tact is the subterfuge the lax avail themselves of to avoid doing their duty.”

Mr Jones’s remark made the Controleur feel suddenly that he wanted a bottle of beer. The missionary leaned forward earnestly.

“Mr Gruyter, you know this man’s transgressions just as well as I do. It’s unnecessary for me to remind you of them. There are no excuses for him. Now he really has overstepped the limit. You’ll never have a better chance than this. I beg you to use the power you have and turn him out once for all.”

The Controleur’s eyes twinkled more brightly than ever. He was having a lot of fun. He reflected that human beings were much more amusing when you did not feel called upon in dealing with them to allot praise or blame.

“But, Mr Jones, do I understand you right? Are you asking me to give you an assurance to deport this man before I’ve heard the evidence against him and listened to his defence?”

“I don’t know what his defence can be.”

The Controleur rose from his chair and really he managed to get quite a little dignity into his five feet four inches.

“I am here to administer justice according to the laws of the Dutch Government. Permit me to tell you that I am exceedingly surprised that you should attempt to influence me in my judicial functions.”

The missionary was a trifle flustered. It had never occurred to him that this little whipper-snapper of a boy, ten years younger than himself, would dream of adopting such an attitude. He opened his mouth to explain and apologize, but the Controleur raised a podgy little hand.

“It is time for me to go to my office, Mr Jones. I wish you good morning.”

The missionary, taken aback, bowed and without another word walked out of the room. He would have been surprised to see what the Controleur did when his back was turned. A broad grin broke on his lips and he put his thumb to his nose and cocked a snook at the Rev. Owen Jones.

A few minutes later he went down to his office. His head clerk, who was a Dutch half-caste, gave him his version of the previous night’s row. It agreed pretty well with Mr Jones’s. The court was sitting that day.

“Will you take Ginger Ted first, sir?” asked the clerk.

“I see no reason to do that. There are two or three cases held over from the last sitting. I will take him in his proper order.”

“I thought perhaps as he was a white man you would like to see him privately, sir.”

“The majesty of the law knows no difference between white and coloured, my friend,” said Mr Gruyter, somewhat pompously.

The court was a big square room with wooden benches on which, crowded together, sat natives of all kinds, Polynesians, Bugis, Chinese, Malays, and they all rose when a door was opened and a sergeant announced the arrival of the

Controleur. He entered with his clerk and took his place on a little dais at a

table of varnished pitch pine. Behind him was a large engraving of Queen Wilhelmina. He dispatched half a dozen cases and then Ginger Ted was brought in. He stood in the dock, handcuffed, with a warder on either side of him. The Controleur looked at him with a grave face, but he could not keep the amusement out of his eyes.

Ginger Ted was suffering from a hang-over. He swayed a little as he stood and his eyes were vacant. He was a man still young, thirty perhaps, of somewhat over the middle height, rather fat, with a bloated red face and a shock of curly red hair. He had not come out of the tussle unscathed. He had a black eye and his mouth was cut and swollen. He wore khaki shorts, very dirty and ragged, and his singlet had been almost torn off his back. A great rent showed the thick mat of red hair with which his chest was covered, but showed also the astonishing whiteness of his skin. The Controleur looked at the charge sheet. He called the evidence. When he had heard it, when he had seen the Chinaman whose head Ginger Ted had broken with a bottle, when he had heard the agitated story of the sergeant who had been knocked flat when he tried to arrest him, when he had listened to the tale of the havoc wrought by Ginger Ted who in his drunken fury had smashed everything he could lay hands on, he turned and addressed the accused in English.

“Well, Ginger, what have you got to say for yourself?”

“I was blind. I don’t remember a thing about it. If they say I half killed “im I suppose I did. I’ll pay the damage if they’ll give me time.”

“You will, Ginger,” said the Controleur, “but it’s me who’ll give you time.”

He looked at Ginger Ted for a minute in silence. He was an unappetizing object. A man who had gone completely to pieces. He was horrible. It made you shudder to look at him and if Mr Jones had not been so officious, at that moment the Controleur would certainly have ordered him to be deported.

“You’ve been a trouble ever since you came to the islands, Ginger. You’re a disgrace. You’re incorrigibly idle. You’ve been picked up in the street dead drunk time and time again. You’ve kicked up row after row. You’re hopeless. I told you the last time you were brought here that if you were arrested again I should deal with you severely. You’ve gone the limit this time and you’re for it. I sentence you to six months’ hard labour.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“By God, I’ll kill you when I come out.”

He burst into a string of oaths both filthy and blasphemous. Mr Gruyter listened scornfully. You can swear much better in Dutch than in English and there was nothing that Ginger Ted said that he could not have effectively capped.

“Be quiet,” he ordered. “You make me tired.”

The Controleur repeated his sentence in Malay and the prisoner was led struggling away.

Mr Gruyter sat down to tiffin in high good-humour. It was astonishing how amusing life could be if you exercised a little ingenuity. There were people in Amsterdam and even in Batavia and Surabaya, who looked upon his island home as a place of exile. They little knew how agreeable it was and what fun he could extract from unpromising material. They asked him whether he did not miss the club and the races and the cinema, the dances that were held once a week at the Casino and the society of Dutch ladies. Not at all. He liked comfort. The substantial furniture of the room in which he sat had a satisfying solidity. He liked reading French novels of a frivolous nature and he appreciated the sensation of reading one after the other without the uneasiness occasioned by the thought that he was wasting his time. It seemed to him a great luxury to waste time. When his young man’s fancy turned to thoughts of love his head boy brought to the house a little dark-skinned bright-eyed creature in a sarong. He took care to form no connexion of a permanent nature. He thought that change kept the heart young. He enjoyed freedom and was not weighed down by a sense of responsibility. He did not mind the heat. It made a sluice over with cold water half a dozen times a day a pleasure that had almost an aesthetic quality. He played the piano. He wrote letters to his friends in Holland. He felt no need for the conversation of intellectual persons. He liked a good laugh, but he could get that out of a fool just as well as out of a professor of philosophy. He had a notion that he was a very wise little man.

Like all good Dutchmen in the Far East he began his lunch with a small glass of Hollands gin. It has a musty acrid flavour, and the taste for it must be acquired, but Mr Gruyter preferred it to any cocktail. When he drank it he felt besides that he was upholding the traditions of his race. Then he had rijsttafel. He had it every day. He heaped a soup-plate high with rice, and then, his three boys waiting on him, helped himself to the curry that one handed him, to the fried egg that another brought, and to the condiment presented by the third. Then each one brought another dish, of bacon, or bananas, or pickled fish, and presently his plate was piled high in a huge pyramid. He stirred it all together and began to eat. He ate slowly and with relish. He drank a bottle of beer.

He did not think while he was eating. His attention was applied to the mass in front of him and he consumed it with a happy concentration. It never palled on him. And when he had emptied the great plate it was a compensation to think that next day he would have rijsttafel again. He grew tired of it as little as the rest of us grow tired of bread. He finished his beer and lit his cigar. The boy brought him a cup of coffee. He leaned back in his chair then and allowed himself the luxury of reflection.

It tickled him to have sentenced Ginger Ted to the richly deserved punishment of six months’ hard labour, and he smiled when he thought of him working on the roads with the other prisoners. It would have been silly to deport from the island the one man with whom he could occasionally have a heart-to-heart talk, and besides, the satisfaction it would have given the missionary would have been bad for that gentleman’s character. Ginger Ted was a scamp and a scallywag, but the Controleur had a kindly feeling for him. They had drunk many a bottle of beer in one another’s company, and when the pearl fishers from Port Darwin came in and they all made a night of it, they had got gloriously tight together. The Controleur liked the reckless way in which Ginger Ted squandered the priceless treasure of life.

Ginger Ted had wandered in one day on the ship that was going up from Merauke to Macassar. The captain did not know how he had found his way there, but he had travelled steerage with the natives, and he stopped off at the Alas Islands because he liked the look of them. Mr Gruyter had a suspicion that their attraction consisted perhaps in their being under the Dutch flag and so out of British jurisdiction. But his papers were in order, so there was no reason why he should not stay. He said that he was buying pearl-shell for an Australian firm, but it soon appeared that his commercial undertakings were not serious. Drink, indeed, took up so much of his time that he had little left over for other pursuits. He was in receipt of two pounds a week, paid monthly, which came regularly to him from England. The Controleur guessed that this sum was paid only so long as he kept well away from the persons who sent it. It was anyway too small to permit him any liberty of movement. Ginger Ted was reticent. The Controleur discovered that he was an Englishman, this he learnt from his passport, which described him as Edward Wilson, and that he had been in Australia. But why he had left England and what he had done in Australia he had no notion. Nor could he ever quite tell to what class Ginger Ted belonged. When you saw him in a filthy singlet and a pair of ragged trousers, a battered topee on his head, with the pearl fishers and heard his conversation, coarse, obscene, and illiterate, you thought he must be a sailor before the mast who had deserted his ship, or a labourer, but when you saw his handwriting you were surprised to find that it was that of a man not without at least some education, and on occasion when you got him alone, if he had had a few drinks but was not yet drunk, he would talk of matters that neither a sailor nor a labourer would have been likely to know anything about. The Controleur had a certain sensitiveness and he realized that Ginger Ted did not speak to him as an inferior to a superior but as an equal. Most of his remittance was mortgaged before he received it, and the Chinamen to whom he owed money were standing at his elbow when the monthly letter was delivered to him, but with what was left he proceeded to get drunk. It was then that he made trouble, for when drunk he grew violent and was then likely to commit acts that brought him into the hands of the police. Hitherto Mr Gruyter had contented himself with keeping him in jail till he was sober and giving him a talking to. When he was out of money he cadged what drink he could from anyone who would give it him. Rum, brandy, arak, it was all the same to him. Two or three times Mr Gruyter had got him work on plantations run by Chinese in one or other of the islands, but he could not stick to it, and in a few weeks was back again at Baru on the beach. It was a miracle how he kept body and soul together. He had, of course, a way with him. He picked up the various dialects spoken on the islands, and knew how to make the natives laugh. They despised him, but they respected his physical strength, and they liked his company. He was as a result never at a loss for a meal or a mat to sleep on. The strange thing was, and it was this that chiefly outraged the Rev. Owen Jones, that he could do anything he liked with a woman. The Controleur could not imagine what it was they saw in him. He was casual with them and rather brutal. He took what they gave him, but seemed incapable of gratitude. He used them for his pleasure and then flung them indifferently away. Once or twice this had got him into trouble, and Mr Gruyter had had to sentence an angry father for sticking a knife in Ginger Ted’s back one night, and a Chinese woman had sought to poison herself by swallowing opium because he had deserted her. Once Mr Jones came to the Controleur in a great state because the beachcomber had seduced one of his converts. The Controleur agreed that it was very deplorable, but could only advise Mr Jones to keep a sharp eye on these young persons. The Controleur liked it less when he discovered that a girl whom he fancied a good deal himself and had been seeing for several weeks had all the time been according her favours also to Ginger Ted. When he thought of this particular incident he smiled again at the thought of Ginger Ted doing six months’ hard labour. It is seldom in this life that in the process of doing your bounden duty you can get back on a fellow who has played you a dirty trick.

A few days later Mr Gruyter was taking a walk, partly for exercise and partly to see that some job he wanted done was being duly proceeded with, when he passed a gang of prisoners working under the charge of a warder. Among them he saw Ginger Ted. He wore the prison sarong, a dingy tunic called in Malay a baju, and his own battered topee. They were repairing the road, and Ginger Ted was wielding a heavy pick. The way was narrow and the Controleur saw that he must pass within a foot of him. He remembered his threats. He knew that Ginger Ted was a man of violent passion, and the language he had used in the dock made it plain that he had not seen what a good joke it was of the Controleur’s to sentence him to six months’ hard labour. If Ginger Ted suddenly attacked him with the pick, nothing on God’s earth could save him. It was true that the warder would immediately shoot him down, but meanwhile the Controleur’s head would be bashed in. It was with a funny little feeling in the pit of his stomach that Mr Gruyter walked through the gang of prisoners. They were working in pairs a few feet from one another. He set his mind on neither hastening his pace nor slackening it. As he passed Ginger Ted, the man swung his pick into the ground and looked up at the Controleur and as he caught his eye winked. The Controleur checked the smile that rose to his lips and with official dignity strode on. But that wink, so lusciously full of sardonic humour, filled him with satisfaction. If he had been the Caliph of Bagdad instead of a junior official in the Dutch Civil Service, he could forthwith have released Ginger Ted, sent slaves to bath and perfume him, and having clothed him in a golden robe entertained him to a sumptuous repast.

Ginger Ted was an exemplary prisoner and in a month or two the Controleur, having occasion to send a gang to do some work on one of the outlying islands, included him in it. There was no jail there, so the ten fellows he sent, under the charge of a warder, were billeted on the natives and after their day’s work lived like free men. The job was sufficient to take up the rest of Ginger Ted’s sentence. The Controleur saw him before he left.

“Look here, Ginger,” he said to him, “here’s ten guilder for you so that you can buy yourself tobacco when you’re gone.”

“Couldn’t you make it a bit more? There’s eight pounds a month coming in regularly.”

“I think that’s enough. I’ll keep the letters that come for you, and when you get back you’ll have a tidy sum. You’ll have enough to take you anywhere you want to go.”

“I’m very comfortable here,” said Ginger Ted.

“Well, the day you come back, clean yourself up and come over to my house. We’ll have a bottle of beer together.”

“That’ll be fine. I guess I’ll be ready for a good crack then.”

Now chance steps in. The island to which Ginger Ted had been sent was called Maputiti, and like all the rest of them it was rocky, heavily wooded, and surrounded by a reef. There was a village among coconuts on the sea-shore opposite the opening of the reef and another village on a brackish lake in the middle of the island. Of this some of the inhabitants had been converted to Christianity. Communication with Baru was effected by a launch that touched at the various islands at irregular intervals. It carried passengers and produce. But the villagers were seafaring folk, and if they had to communicate urgently with Baru, manned a prahu and sailed the fifty miles or so that separated them from it. It happened that when Ginger Ted’s sentence had but another fortnight to run the Christian headman of the village on the lake was taken suddenly ill. The native remedies availed him nothing and he writhed in agony. Messengers were sent to Baru imploring the missionary’s help; but as ill luck would have it Mr Jones was suffering at the moment from an attack of malaria. He was in bed and unable to move. He talked the matter over with his sister.

“It sounds like acute appendicitis,” he told her.

“You can’t go, Owen,” she said.

“I can’t let the man die.”

Mr Jones had a temperature of a hundred and four. His head was aching like mad. He had been delirious all night. His eyes were shining strangely and his sister felt that he was holding on to his wits by a sheer effort of will.

“You couldn’t operate in the state you’re in.”

“No, I couldn’t. Then Hassan must go.”

Hassan was the dispenser.

“You couldn’t trust Hassan. He’d never dare to do an operation on his own responsibility. And they’d never let him. I’ll go. Hassan can stay here and look after you.”

“You can’t remove an appendix.”

“Why not? I’ve seen you do it. I’ve done lots of minor operations.”

Mr Jones felt he didn’t quite understand what she was saying.

“Is the launch in?”

“No, it’s gone to one of the islands. But I can go in the prahu the men came in.”

“You? I wasn’t thinking of you. You can’t go.”

“I’m going, Owen.”

“Going where?” he said.

She saw that his mind was wandering already. She put her hand soothingly on his dry forehead. She gave him a dose of medicine. He muttered something and she realized that he did not know where he was. Of course she was anxious about him, but she knew that his illness was not dangerous, and she could leave him safely to the mission boy who was helping her nurse him and to the native dispenser. She slipped out of the room. She put her toilet things, a night-dress, and a change of clothes into a bag. A little chest with surgical instruments, bandages, and antiseptic dressings was kept always ready. She gave them to the two natives who had come over from Maputiti, and telling the dispenser what she was going to do gave him instructions to inform her brother when he was able to listen. Above all he was not to be anxious about her. She put on her topee and sallied forth. The mission was about half a mile from the village. She walked quickly. At the end of the jetty the prahu was waiting. Six men manned it. She took her place in the stern and they set off with a rapid stroke. Within the reef the sea was calm, but when they crossed the bar they came upon a long swell. But this was not the first journey of the sort Miss Jones had taken and she was confident of the seaworthiness of the boat she was in. It was noon and the sun beat down from a sultry sky. The only thing that harassed her was that they could not arrive before dark, and if she found it necessary to operate at once she could count only on the light of hurricane lamps.

Miss Jones was a woman of hard on forty. Nothing in her appearance would have prepared you for such determination as she had just shown. She had an odd drooping gracefulness, which suggested that she might be swayed by every breeze; it was almost an affectation; and it made the strength of character which you soon discovered in her seem positively monstrous. She was flat-chested, tall, and extremely thin. She had a long sallow face and she was much afflicted with prickly heat. Her lank brown hair was drawn back straight from her forehead. She had rather small eyes, grey in colour, and because they were somewhat too close they gave her face a shrewish look. Her nose was long and thin and a trifle red. She suffered a good deal from indigestion. But this infirmity availed nothing against her ruthless determination to look upon the bright side of things. Firmly persuaded that the world was evil and men unspeakably vicious, she extracted any little piece of decency she could find in them with the modest pride with which a conjurer extracts a rabbit from a hat. She was quick, resourceful, and competent. When she arrived on the island she saw that there was not a moment to lose if she was to save the headman’s life. Under the greatest difficulties, showing a native how to give the anaesthetic, she operated, and for the next three days nursed the patient with anxious assiduity. Everything went very well and she realized that her brother could not have made a better job of it. She waited long enough to take out the stitches and then prepared to go home. She could flatter herself that she had not wasted her time. She had given medical attention to such as needed it, she had strengthened the small Christian community in its faith, admonished such as were lax, and cast the good seed in places where it might be hoped under divine providence to take root.

The launch, coming from one of the other islands, put in somewhat late in the afternoon, but it was full moon and they expected to reach Baru before midnight. They brought her things down to the wharf and the people who were seeing her off stood about repeating their thanks. Quite a little crowd collected. The launch was loaded with sacks of copra, but Miss Jones was used to its strong smell and it did not incommode her. She made herself as comfortable a place to sit in as she could, and waiting for the launch to start, chatted with her grateful flock. She was the only passenger. Suddenly a group of natives emerged from the trees that embowered the little village on the lagoon and she saw that among them was a white man. He wore a prison sarong and a baju. He had long red hair. She at once recognized Ginger Ted.

A policeman was with him. They shook hands and Ginger Ted shook hands with the villagers who accompanied him. They bore bundles of fruit and a jar which Miss Jones guessed contained native spirit, and these they put in the launch. She discovered to her surprise that Ginger Ted was coming with her. His term was up and instructions had arrived that he was to be returned to Baru in the launch. He gave her a glance, but did not nod -indeed Miss Jones turned away her head-and stepped in. The mechanic started his engine and in a moment they were jug-jugging through the channel in the lagoon. Ginger Ted clambered on to a pile of sacks and lit a cigarette.

Miss Jones ignored him. Of course she knew him very well. Her heart sank when she thought that he was going to be once more in Baru, creating a scandal and drinking, a peril to the women and a thorn in the flesh of all decent people. She knew the steps her brother had taken to have him deported and she had no patience with the Controleur, who would not see a duty that stared him so plainly in the face. When they had crossed the bar and were in the open sea Ginger Ted took the stopper out of the jar of arak and putting his mouth to it took a long pull. Then he handed the jar to the two mechanics who formed the crew. One was a middle-aged man and the other a youth.

“I do not wish you to drink anything while we are on the journey,” said Miss Jones sternly to the elder one.

He smiled at her and drank.

“A little arak can do no one any harm,” he answered. He passed the jar to his companion, who drank also.

“If you drink again I shall complain to the Controleur,” said Miss Jones.

The elder man said something she could not understand, but which she suspected was very rude, and passed the jar back to Ginger Ted. They went along for an hour or more. The sea was like glass and the sun set radiantly. It set behind one of the islands and for a few minutes changed it into a mystic city of the skies. Miss Jones turned round to watch it and her heart was filled with gratitude for the beauty of the world.

“And only man is vile,” she quoted to herself.

They went due east. In the distance was a little island which she knew they passed close by. It was uninhabited. A rocky islet thickly grown with virgin forest. The boatman lit his lamps. The night fell and immediately the sky was thick with stars. The moon had not yet risen. Suddenly there was a slight jar and the launch began to vibrate strangely. The engine rattled. The head mechanic calling to his mate to take the helm, crept under the housing. They seemed to be going more slowly. The engine stopped. She asked the youth what was the matter, but he did not know. Ginger Ted got down from the top of the copra sacks and slipped under the housing. When he reappeared she would have liked to ask him what had happened, but her dignity prevented her. She sat still and occupied herself with her thoughts. There was a long swell and the launch rolled slightly. The mechanic emerged once more into view and started the engine. Though it rattled like mad they began to move. The launch vibrated from stem to stern. They went very slowly. Evidently something was amiss, but Miss Jones was exasperated rather than alarmed. The launch was supposed to do six knots, but now it was just crawling along; at that rate they would not get into Baru till long, long after midnight. The mechanic, still busy under the housing, shouted out something to the man at the helm. They spoke in Bugi, of which Miss Jones knew very little. But after a while she noticed that they had changed their course and seemed to be heading for the little uninhabited island a good deal to the lee of which they should have passed.

“Where are we going?” she asked the helmsman with sudden misgiving.

He pointed to the islet. She got up and went to the housing and called to the man to come out.

“You’re not going there? Why? What’s the matter?”

“I can’t get to Baru,” he said.

“But you must. I insist. I order you to go to Baru.”

The man shrugged his shoulders. He turned his back on her and slipped once more under the housing. Then Ginger Ted addressed her.

“One of the blades of the propeller has broken off. He thinks he can get as far as that island. We shall have to stay the night there and he’ll put on a new propeller in the morning when the tide’s out.”

“I can’t spend the night on an uninhabited island with three men,” she cried.

“A lot of women would jump at it.”

“I insist on going to Baru. Whatever happens we must get there tonight.”

“Don’t get excited, old girl. We’ve got to beach the boat to put a new propeller on, and we shall be all right on the island.”

“How dare you speak to me like that! I think you’re very insolent.”

“You’ll be O.K. We’ve got plenty of grub and we’ll have a snack when we land. You have a drop of arak and you’ll feel like a house on fire.”

“You’re an impertinent man. If you don’t go to Baru I’ll have you all put in prison.”

“We’re not going to Baru. We can’t. We’re going to that island and if you don’t like it you can get out and swim.”

“Oh, you’ll pay for this.”

“Shut up, you old cow,” said Ginger Ted.

Miss Jones gave a gasp of anger. But she controlled herself. Even out there, in the middle of the ocean, she had too much dignity to bandy words with that vile wretch. The launch, the engine rattling horribly, crawled on. It was pitch dark now, and she could no longer see the island they were making for. Miss Jones, deeply incensed, sat with lips tight shut and a frown on her brow; she was not used to being crossed. Then the moon rose and she could see the bulk of Ginger Ted sprawling on the top of the piled sacks of copra. The glimmer of his cigarette was strangely sinister. Now the island was vaguely outlined against the sky. They reached it and the boatman ran the launch on to the beach. Suddenly Miss Jones gave a gasp. The truth had dawned on her and her anger changed to fear. Her heart beat violently. She shook in every limb. She felt dreadfully faint. She saw it all. Was the broken propeller a put-up job or was it an accident? She could not be certain; anyhow, she knew that Ginger Ted would seize the opportunity. Ginger Ted would rape her. She knew his character. He was mad about women. That was what he had done, practically, to the girl at the mission, such a good little thing she was and an excellent sempstress; they would have prosecuted him for that and he would have been sentenced to years of imprisonment only very unfortunately the innocent child had gone back to him several times and indeed had only complained of his ill usage when he left her for somebody else. They had gone to the Controleur about it, but he had refused to take any steps, saying in that coarse way of his that even if what the girl said was true, it didn’t look very much as though it had been an altogether unpleasant experience. Ginger Ted was a scoundrel. And she was a white woman. What chance was there that he would spare her? None. She knew men. But she must pull herself together. She must keep her wits about her. She must have courage. She was determined to sell her virtue dearly, and if he killed her–well, she would rather die than yield. And if she died she would rest in the arms of Jesus. For a moment a great light blinded her eyes and she saw the mansions of her Heavenly Father. They were a grand and sumptuous mixture of a picture palace and a railway station. The mechanics and Ginger Ted jumped out of the launch and, waist-deep in water, gathered round the broken propeller. She took advantage of their preoccupation to get her case of surgical instruments out of the box. She took out the four scalpels it contained and secreted them in her clothing. If Ginger Ted touched her she would not hesitate to plunge a scalpel in his heart.

“Now then, miss, you’d better get out,” said Ginger Ted. “You’ll be better off on the beach than in the boat.”

She thought so too. At least here she would have freedom of action. Without a word she clambered over the copra sacks. He offered her his hand.

“I don’t want your help,” she said coldly.

“You can go to hell,” he answered.

It was a little difficult to get out of the boat without showing her legs, but by the exercise of considerable ingenuity she managed it.

“Damned lucky we’ve got something to eat. We’ll make a fire and then you’d better have a snack and a nip of arak.”

“I want nothing. I only want to be left alone.”

“It won’t hurt me if you go hungry.”

She did not answer. She walked, with head erect, along the beach. She held the largest scalpel in her closed fist. The moon allowed her to see where she was going. She looked for a place to hide. The thick forest came down to the very edge of the beach; but, afraid of its darkness (after all, she was but a woman), she dared not plunge into its depth. She did not know what animals lurked there or what dangerous snakes. Besides, her instinct told her that it was better to keep those three bad men in sight; then if they came towards her she would be prepared. Presently she found a little hollow. She looked round. They seemed to be occupied with their own efforts and they could not see her. She slipped in. There was a rock between them and her so that she was hidden from them and yet could watch them. She saw them go to and from the boat carrying things. She saw them build a fire. It lit them luridly and she saw them sit around it and eat, and she saw the jar of arak passed from one to the other. They were all going to get drunk. What would happen to her then? It might be that she could cope with Ginger Ted, though his strength terrified her, but against three she would be powerless. A mad idea came to her to go to Ginger Ted and fall on her knees before him and beg him to spare her. He must have some spark of decent feeling in him and she had always been so convinced that there was good even in the worst of men. He must have had a mother. Perhaps he had a sister. Ah, but how could you appeal to a man blinded with lust and drunk with arak? She began to feel terribly weak. She was afraid she was going to cry. That would never do. She needed all her self-control. She bit her lip. She watched them, like a tiger watching his prey; no, not like that, like a lamb watching three hungry wolves. She saw them put more wood on the fire, and Ginger Ted, in his sarong, silhouetted by the flames. Perhaps after he had had his will of her he would pass her on to the others. How could she go back to her brother when such a thing had happened to her? Of course he would be sympathetic, but would he ever feel quite the same to her again? It would break his heart. And perhaps he would think that she ought to have resisted more.

For his sake perhaps it would be better if she said nothing about it. Naturally the men would say nothing. It would mean twenty years in prison for them. But then supposing she had a baby. Miss Jones instinctively clenched her hands with horror and nearly cut herself with the scalpel. Of course it would only infuriate them if she resisted.

“What shall I do?” she cried. “What have I done to deserve this?”

She flung herself down on her knees and prayed to God to save her. She prayed long and earnestly. She reminded God that she was a virgin and just mentioned, in case it had slipped the divine memory, how much St Paul had valued that excellent state. And then she peeped round the rock again. The three men appeared to be smoking and the fire was dying down. Now was the time that Ginger Ted’s lewd thoughts might be expected to turn to the woman who was at his mercy. She smothered a cry, for suddenly he got up and walked in her direction. She felt all her muscles grow taut, and though her heart was beating furiously she clenched the scalpel firmly in her hand. But it was for another purpose that Ginger Ted had got up. Miss Jones blushed and looked away. He strolled slowly back to the others and sitting down again raised the jar of arak to his lips. Miss Jones, crouching behind the rock, watched with straining eyes. The conversation round the fire grew less and presently she divined, rather than saw, that the two natives wrapped themselves in blankets and composed themselves to slumber. She understood. This was the moment Ginger Ted had been waiting for. When they were fast asleep he would get up cautiously and without a sound, in order not to wake the others, creep stealthily towards her. Was it that he was unwilling to share her with them or did he know that his deed was so dastardly that he did not wish them to know of it? After all, he was a white man and she was a white woman. He could not have sunk so low as to allow her to suffer the violence of natives. But his plan, which was so obvious to her, had given her an idea; when she saw him coming she would scream, she would scream so loudly that it would wake the two mechanics. She remembered now that the elder, though he had only one eye, had a kind face. But Ginger Ted did not move. She was feeling terribly tired. She began to fear that she would not have the strength now to resist him. She had gone through too much. She closed her eyes for a minute.

When she opened them it was broad daylight. She must have fallen asleep and, so shattered was she by emotion, have slept till long after dawn. It gave her quite a turn. She sought to rise, but something caught in her legs. She looked and found that she was covered with two empty copra sacks. Someone had come in the night and put them over her. Ginger Ted! She gave a little scream. The horrible thought flashed through her mind that he had outraged her in her sleep. No. It was impossible. And yet he had had her at his mercy. Defenceless. And he had spared her. She blushed furiously. She raised herself to her feet, feeling a little stiff, and arranged her disordered dress. The scalpel had fallen from her hand and she picked it up. She took the two copra sacks and emerged from her hiding-place. She walked towards the boat. It was floating in the shallow water of the lagoon.

“Come on, Miss Jones,” said Ginger Ted. “We’ve finished. I was just going to wake you up.”

She could not look at him, but she felt herself as red as a turkey cock.

“Have a banana?” he said.

Without a word she took it. She was very hungry, and ate it with relish.

“Step on this rock and you’ll be able to get in without wetting your feet.”

Miss Jones felt as though she could sink into the ground with shame, but she did as he told her. He took hold of her arm-good heavens his hand was like an iron vice, never, never could she have struggled with him-and helped her into the launch. The mechanic started the engine and they slid out of the lagoon. In three hours they were at Baru.

That evening, having been officially released, Ginger Ted went to the Controleur’s house. He wore no longer the prison uniform but the ragged singlet and the khaki shorts in which he had been arrested. He had had his hair cut and it fitted his head now like a little curly red cap. He was thinner. He had lost his bloated flabbiness and looked younger and better. Mr Gruyter, a friendly grin on his round face, shook hands with him and asked him to sit down. The boy brought two bottles of beer.

“I’m glad to see you hadn’t forgotten my invitation, Ginger,” said the Controleur.

“Not likely. I’ve been looking forward to this for six months.”

“Here’s luck, Ginger Ted.”

“Same to you, Controleur.”

They emptied their glasses and the Controleur clapped his hands. The boy brought two more bottles.

“Well, you don’t bear me any malice for the sentence I gave you, I hope.”

“No bloody fear. I was mad for a minute, but I got over it. I didn’t have half a bad time, you know. Nice lot of girls on that island, Controleur. You ought to give “em a look over one of these days.”

“You’re a bad lot, Ginger.”

“Terrible.”

“Good beer, isn’t it?”

“Fine.”

“Let’s have some more.”

Ginger Ted’s remittance had been arriving every month and the Controleur now had fifty pounds for him. When the damage he had done to the Chinaman’s shop was paid for there would still be over thirty.

“That’s quite a lot of money, Ginger. You ought to do something useful with it.”

“I mean to,” answered Ginger. “Spend it.”

The Controleur sighed.

“Well, that’s what money’s for, I guess.”

The Controleur gave his guest the news. Not much had happened during the last six months. Time on the Alas Islands did not matter very much and the rest of the world did not matter at all.

“Any wars anywhere?” asked Ginger Ted.

“No. Not that I’ve noticed. Harry Jervis found a pretty big pearl. He says he’s going to ask a thousand quid for it.”

“I hope he gets it.”

“And Charlie McCormack’s married.”

“He always was a bit soft.”

Suddenly the boy appeared and said Mr Jones wished to know if he might come in. Before the Controleur could give an answer Mr Jones walked in.

“I won’t detain you long,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get hold of this good man all day and when I heard he was here I thought you wouldn’t mind my coming.”

“How is Miss Jones?” asked the Controleur politely. “None the worse for her night in the open, I trust.”

“She’s naturally a bit shaken. She had a temperature and I’ve insisted on her going to bed, but I don’t think it’s serious.”

The two men had got up on the missionary’s entrance, and now the missionary went up to Ginger Ted and held out his hand.

“I want to thank you. You did a great and noble thing. My sister is right, one should always look for the good in their fellow-men; I am afraid I misjudged you in the past; I beg your pardon.”

He spoke very solemnly. Ginger Ted looked at him with amazement. He had not been able to prevent the missionary taking his hand. He still held it.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You had my sister at your mercy and you spared her. I thought you were all evil and I am ashamed. She was defenceless. She was in your power. You had pity on her. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Neither my sister nor I will ever forget. God bless and guard you always.”

Mr Jones’s voice shook a little and he turned his head away. He released Ginger Ted’s hand and strode quickly to the door. Ginger Ted watched him with a blank face.

“What the blazes does he mean?” he asked.

The Controleur laughed. He tried to control himself, but the more he did the more he laughed. He shook and you saw the folds of his fat belly ripple under the sarong. He leaned back in his long chair and rolled from side to side. He did not laugh only with his face, he laughed with his whole body, and even the muscles of his podgy legs shook with mirth. He held his aching ribs. Ginger Ted looked at him frowning, and because he did not understand what the joke was he grew angry. He seized one of the empty beer bottles by the neck.

“If you don’t stop laughing, I’ll break your bloody head open,” he said.

The Controleur mopped his face. He swallowed a mouthful of beer. He sighed and groaned because his sides were hurting him.

“He’s thanking you for having respected the virtue of Miss Jones,” he spluttered at last.

“Me?” cried Ginger Ted.

The thought took quite a long time to travel through his head, but when at last he got it he flew into a violent rage. There flowed from his mouth such a stream of blasphemous obscenities as would have startled a marine.

“That old cow,” he finished. “What does he take me for?”

“You have the reputation of being rather hot stuff with the girls, Ginger,” giggled the little Controleur.

“I wouldn’t touch her with the fag-end of a barge-pole. It never entered my head. The nerve. I’ll wring his blasted neck. Look here, give me my money, I’m going to get drunk.”

“I don’t blame you,” said the Controleur.

“That old cow,” repeated Ginger Ted. “That old cow.”

He was shocked and outraged. The suggestion really shattered his sense of decency.

The Controleur had the money at hand and having got Ginger Ted to sign the necessary papers gave it to him.

“Go and get drunk, Ginger Ted,” he said, “but I warn you, if you get into mischief it’ll be twelve months next time.”

“I shan’t get into mischief,” said Ginger Ted sombrely. He was suffering from a sense of injury. “It’s an insult,” he shouted at the Controleur. “That’s what it is, it’s a bloody insult.”

He lurched out of the house, and as he went he muttered to himself: “Dirty swine, dirty swine.” Ginger Ted remained drunk for a week. Mr Jones went to see the Controleur again.

“I’m very sorry to hear that poor fellow has taken up his evil course again,” he said. “My sister and I are dreadfully disappointed. I’m afraid it wasn’t very wise to give him so much money at once.”

“It was his own money. I had no right to keep it back.”

“Not a legal right, perhaps, but surely a moral right.”

He told the Controleur the story of that fearful night on the island. With her feminine instinct, Miss Jones had realized that the man, inflamed with lust, was determined to take advantage of her, and, resolved to defend herself to the last, had armed herself with a scalpel. He told the Controleur how she had prayed and wept and how she had hidden herself. Her agony was indescribable, and she knew that she could never have survived the shame. She rocked to and fro and every moment she thought he was coming. And there was no help anywhere and at last she had fallen asleep; she was tired out, poor thing, she had undergone more than any human being could stand, and then when she awoke she found that he had covered her with copra sacks. He had found her asleep, and surely it was her innocence, her very helplessness that had moved him, he hadn’t the heart to touch her; he covered her gently with two copra sacks and crept silently away.

“It shows you that deep down in him there is something sterling. My sister feels it’s our duty to save him. We must do something for him.”

“Well, in your place I wouldn’t try till he’s got through all his money,” said the Controleur, “and then if he’s not in jail you can do what you like.”

But Ginger Ted didn’t want to be saved. About a fortnight after his release from prison he was sitting on a stool outside a Chinaman’s shop looking vacantly down the street when he saw Miss Jones coming along. He stared at her for a minute and once more amazement seized him. He muttered to himself and there can be little doubt that his mutterings were disrespectful. But then he noticed that Miss Jones had seen him and he quickly turned his head away; he was conscious, notwithstanding, that she was looking at him. She was walking briskly, but she sensibly diminished her pace as she approached him. He thought she was going to stop and speak to him. He got up quickly and went into the shop. He did not venture to come out for at least five minutes. Half an hour later Mr Jones himself came along and he went straight up to Ginger Ted with outstretched hand.

“How do you do, Mr Edward? My sister told me I should find you here.”

Ginger Ted gave him a surly look and did not take the proffered hand. He made no answer.

“We’d be so very glad if you’d come to dinner with us next Sunday. My sister’s a capital cook and she’ll make you a real Australian dinner.”

“Go to hell,” said Ginger Ted.

“That’s not very gracious,” said the missionary, but with a little laugh to show that he was not affronted. “You go and see the Controleur from time to time, why shouldn’t you come and see us? It’s pleasant to talk to white people now and then. Won’t you let bygones be bygones? I can assure you of a very cordial welcome.”

“I haven’t got clothes fit to go out in,” said Ginger Ted sulkily.

“Oh, never mind about that. Come as you are.”

“I won’t.”

“Why not? You must have a reason.”

Ginger Ted was a blunt man. He had no hesitation in saying what we should all like to when we receive unwelcome invitations. “I don’t want to.”

“I’m sorry. My sister will be very disappointed.”

Mr Jones, determined to show that he was not in the least offended, gave him a breezy nod and walked on. Forty-eight hours later there mysteriously arrived at the house in which Ginger Ted lodged a parcel containing a suit of ducks, a tennis shirt, a pair of socks, and some shoes. He was unaccustomed to receiving presents and next time he saw the Controleur asked him if it was he who had sent the things.

“Not on your life,” replied the Controleur. “I’m perfectly indifferent to the state of your wardrobe.”

“Well, then, who the hell can have?”

“Search me.”

It was necessary from time to time for Miss Jones to see Mr Gruyter on business and shortly after this she came to see him one morning in his office. She was a capable woman and though she generally wanted him to do something he had no mind to, she did not waste his time. He was a little surprised then to discover that she had come on a very trivial errand. When he told her that he could not take cognizance of the matter in question, she did not as was her habit try to convince him, but accepted his refusal as definite. She got up to go and then as though it were an afterthought said:

“Oh, Mr Gruyter, my brother is very anxious that we should have the man they call Ginger Ted to supper with us and I’ve written him a little note inviting him for the day after tomorrow. I think he’s rather shy, and I wonder if you’d come with him.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“My brother feels that we ought to do something for the poor fellow.”

“A woman’s influence and all that sort of thing,” said the Controleur demurely.

“Will you persuade him to come? I’m sure he will if you make a point of it, and when he knows the way he’ll come again. It seems such a pity to let a young man like that go to pieces altogether.”

The Controleur looked up at her. She was several inches taller than he. He thought her very unattractive. She reminded him strangely of wet linen hung on a clothes-line to dry. His eyes twinkled, but he kept a straight face.

“I’ll do my best,” he said.

“How old is he?” she asked.

“According to his passport he’s thirty-one.”

“And what is his real name?”

“Wilson.”

“Edward Wilson,” she said softly.

“It’s astonishing that after the life he’s led he should be so strong,” murmured the Controleur. “He has the strength of an ox.”

“Those red-headed men sometimes are very powerful,” said Miss Jones, but spoke as though she were choking.

“Quite so,” said the Controleur.

Then for no obvious reason Miss Jones blushed. She hurriedly said goodbye to the Controleur and left his office.

“Godverdomme!” said the Controleur.

He knew now who had sent Ginger Ted the new clothes.

He met him during the course of the day and asked him whether he had heard from Miss Jones. Ginger Ted took a crumpled ball of paper out of his pocket and gave it to him. It was the invitation. It ran as follows:

Dear Mr Wilson

My brother and I would be so very glad if you would come and have supper with us next Thursday at 7.30. The Controleur has kindly promised to come. We have some new records from Australia which I am sure you will like. I am afraid I was not very nice to you last time we met, but I did not know you so well then, and I am big enough to admit it when I have committed an error. I hope you will forgive me and let me be your friend,

Yours sincerely, Martha Jones

The Controleur noticed that she addressed him as Mr Wilson and referred to his own promise to go, so that when she told him she had already invited Ginger Ted she had a little anticipated the truth.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m not going, if that’s what you mean. Damned nerve.”

“You must answer the letter.”

“Well, I won’t.”

“Now look here, Ginger, you put on those new clothes and you come as a favour to me. I’ve got to go and, damn it all, you can’t leave me in the lurch. It won’t hurt you just once.”

Ginger Ted looked at the Controleur suspiciously, but his face was serious and his manner sincere: he could not guess that within him the Dutchman bubbled with laughter.

“What the devil do they want me for?”

“I don’t know. The pleasure of your society, I suppose.”

“Will there be any booze?”

“No, but come up to my house at seven, and we’ll have a tiddly before we go.”

“Oh, all right,” said Ginger Ted sulkily.

The Controleur rubbed his little fat hands with joy. He was expecting a great deal of amusement from the party. But when Thursday came and seven o’clock, Ginger Ted was dead drunk and Mr Gruyter had to go alone. He told the missionary and his sister the plain truth. Mr Jones shook his head.

“I’m afraid it’s no good, Martha, the man’s hopeless.”

For a moment Miss Jones was silent and the Controleur saw two tears trickle down her long thin nose. She bit her lip.

“No one is hopeless. Everyone has some good in him. I shall pray for him every night. It would be wicked to doubt the power of God.”

Perhaps Miss Jones was right in this, but the divine providence took a very funny way of effecting its ends. Ginger Ted began to drink more heavily than ever. He was so troublesome that even Mr Gruyter lost patience with him. He made up his mind that he could not have the fellow on the island any more and resolved to deport him on the next boat that touched at Baru. Then a man died under mysterious circumstances after having been for a trip to one of the islands and the Controleur learnt that there had been several deaths on the same island. He sent the Chinese who was the official doctor of the group to look into the matter, and very soon received intelligence that the deaths were due to cholera. Two more took place at Baru and the certainty was forced upon him that there was an epidemic.

The Controleur cursed freely. He cursed in Dutch, he cursed in English, and he cursed in Malay. Then he drank a bottle of beer and smoked a cigar. After that he took thought. He knew the Chinese doctor would be useless. He was a nervous little man from Java and the natives would refuse to obey his orders. The Controleur was efficient and knew pretty well what must be done, but he could not do everything single-handed. He did not like Mr Jones, but just then he was thankful that he was at hand, and he sent for him at once. He was accompanied by his sister.

“You know what I want to see you about, Mr Jones,” he said abruptly.

“Yes. I’ve been expecting a message from you. That is why my sister has come with me. We are ready to put all our resources at your disposal. I need not tell you that my sister is as competent as a man.”

“I know. I shall be very glad of her assistance.”

They set to without further delay to discuss the steps that must be taken. Hospital huts would have to be erected and quarantine stations. The inhabitants of the various villages on the islands must be forced to take proper precautions. In a good many cases the infected villages drew their water from the same well as the uninfected, and in each case this difficulty would have to be dealt with according to circumstances. It was necessary to send round people to give orders and make sure that they were carried out. Negligence must be ruthlessly punished. The worst of it was that the natives would not obey other natives, and orders given by native policemen, themselves unconvinced of their efficacy, would certainly be disregarded. It was advisable for Mr Jones to stay at Baru, where the population was largest and his medical attention most wanted; and what with the official duties that forced him to keep in touch with headquarters, it was impossible for Mr Gruyter to visit all the other islands himself. Miss Jones must go; but the natives of some of the outlying islands were wild and treacherous; the Controleur had had a good deal of trouble with them. He did not like the idea of exposing her to danger.

“I’m not afraid,” she said.

“I daresay. But if you have your throat cut I shall get into trouble, and besides, we’re so short-handed I don’t want to risk losing your help.”

“Then let Mr Wilson come with me. He knows the natives better than anyone and can speak all their dialects.”

“Ginger Ted?” The Controleur stared at her. “He’s just getting over an attack of D.T.s.”

“I know,” she answered.

“You know a great deal, Miss Jones.”

Even though the moment was so serious Mr Gruyter could not but smile. He gave her a sharp look, but she met it coolly.

“There’s nothing like responsibility for bringing out what there is in a man, and I think something like this may be the making of him.”

“Do you think it would be wise to trust yourself for days at a time to a man of such infamous character?” said the missionary.

“I put my trust in God,” she answered gravely.

“Do you think he’d be any use?” asked the Controleur. “You know what he is.”

“I’m convinced of it.” Then she blushed. “After all, no one knows better than I that he’s capable of self-control.”

The Controleur bit his lip.

“Let’s send for him.”

He gave a message to the sergeant and in a few minutes Ginger Ted stood before them. He looked ill. He had evidently been much shaken by his recent attack and his nerves were all to pieces. He was in rags and he had not shaved for a week. No one could have looked more disreputable.

“Look here, Ginger,” said the Controleur, “it’s about this cholera business. We’ve got to force the natives to take precautions and we want you to help us.”

“Why the hell should I?”

“No reason at all. Except philanthropy.”

“Nothing doing, Controleur. I’m not a philanthropist.”

“That settles that. That was all. You can go.”

But as Ginger Ted turned to the door Miss Jones stopped him.

“It was my suggestion, Mr Wilson. You see, they want me to go to Labobo and Sakunchi, and the natives there are so funny I was afraid to go alone. I thought if you came I should be safer.”

He gave her a look of extreme distaste.

“What do you suppose I care if they cut your throat?”

Miss Jones looked at him and her eyes filled with tears. She began to cry. He stood and watched her stupidly.

“There’s no reason why you should.” She pulled herself together and dried her eyes. “I’m being silly. I shall be all right. I’ll go alone.”

“It’s damned foolishness for a woman to go to Labobo.”

She gave him a little smile.

“I daresay it is, but you see, it’s my job and I can’t help myself. I’m sorry if I offended you by asking you. You must forget about it. I daresay it wasn’t quite fair to ask you to take such a risk.”

For quite a minute Ginger Ted stood and looked at her. He shifted from one foot to the other. His surly face seemed to grow black.

“Oh, hell, have it your own way,” he said at last. “I’ll come with you. When d’you want to start?”

They set out next day, with drugs and disinfectants, in the Government launch. Mr Gruyter as soon as he had put the necessary work in order was to start off in a prahu in the other direction. For four months the epidemic raged. Though everything possible was done to localize it, one island after another was attacked. The Controleur was busy from morning to night. He had no sooner got back to Baru from one or other of the islands to do what was necessary there than he had to set off again. He distributed food and medicine. He cheered the terrified people. He supervised everything. He worked like a dog. He saw nothing of Ginger Ted, but he heard from Mr Jones that the experiment was working out beyond all hopes. The scamp was behaving himself. He had a way with the natives; and by cajolery, firmness, and on occasion the use of his fist, managed to make them take the steps necessary for their own safety. Miss Jones could congratulate herself on the success of the scheme. But the Controleur was too tired to be amused. When the epidemic had run its course he rejoiced because out of a population of eight thousand only six hundred had died.

Finally he was able to give the district a clean bill of health.

One evening he was sitting in his sarong on the veranda of his house and he read a French novel with the happy consciousness that once more he could take things easy. His head boy came in and told him that Ginger Ted wished to see him. He got up from his chair and shouted to him to come in. Company was just what he wanted. It had crossed the Controleur’s mind that it would be pleasant to get drunk that night, but it is dull to get drunk alone, and he had regretfully put the thought aside. And heaven had sent Ginger Ted in the nick of time. By God, they would make a night of it. After four months they deserved a bit of fun. Ginger Ted entered. He was wearing a clean suit of white ducks. He was shaved. He looked another man.

“Why, Ginger, you look as if you’d been spending a month at a health resort instead of nursing a pack of natives dying of cholera. And look at your clothes. Have you just stepped out of a band-box?”

Ginger Ted smiled rather sheepishly. The head boy brought two bottles of beer and poured them out.

“Help yourself, Ginger,” said the Controleur as he took his glass.

“I don’t think I’ll have any, thank you.”

The Controleur put down his glass and looked at Ginger Ted with amazement.

“Why, what’s the matter? Aren’t you thirsty?”

“I don’t mind having a cup of tea.”

“A cup of what?”

“I’m on the wagon. Martha and I are going to be married.”

“Ginger!”

The Controleur’s eyes popped out of his head. He scratched his shaven pate.

“You can’t marry Miss Jones,” he said. “No one could marry Miss Jones.”

“Well, I’m going to. That’s what I’ve come to see you about. Owen’s going to marry us in chapel, but we want to be married by Dutch law as well.”

“A joke’s a joke, Ginger. What’s the idea?”

“She wanted it. She fell for me that night we spent on the island when the propeller broke. She’s not a bad old girl when you get to know her. It’s her last chance, if you understand what I mean, and I’d like to do something to oblige her. And she wants someone to take care of her, there’s no doubt about that.”

“Ginger, Ginger, before you can say knife she’ll make you into a damned missionary.”

“I don’t know that I’d mind that so much if we had a little mission of our own. She says I’m a bloody marvel with the natives. She says I can do more with a native in five minutes than Owen can do in a year. She says she’s never known anyone with the magnetism I have. It seems a pity to waste a gift like that.”

The Controleur looked at him without speaking and slowly nodded his head three or four times. She’d nobbled him all right.

“I’ve converted seventeen already,” said Ginger Ted.

“You? I didn’t know you believed in Christianity.”

“Well, I don’t know that I did exactly, but when I talked to “em and they just came into the fold like a lot of blasted sheep, well, it gave me quite a turn. Blimey, I said, I daresay there’s something in it after all.”

“You should have raped her, Ginger. I wouldn’t have been hard on you. I wouldn’t have given you more than three years and three years is soon over.”

“Look here, Controleur, don’t you ever let on that the thought never entered my head. Women are touchy, you know, and she’d be as sore as hell if she knew that.”

“I guessed she’d got her eye on you, but I never thought it would come to this.” The Controleur in an agitated manner walked up and down the veranda. “Listen to me, old boy,” he said after an interval of reflection, “we’ve had some grand times together and a friend’s a friend. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll lend you the launch and you can go and hide on one of the islands till the next ship comes along and then I’ll get “em to slow down and take you on board. You’ve only got one chance now and that’s to cut and run.” Ginger Ted shook his head.

“It’s no good, Controleur, I know you mean well, but I’m going to marry the blasted woman, and that’s that. You don’t know the joy of bringing all them bleeding sinners to repentance, and Christ! that girl can make a treacle pudding. I haven’t eaten a better one since I was a kid.”

The Controleur was very much disturbed. The drunken scamp was his only companion on the islands and he did not want to lose him. He discovered that he had even a certain affection for him. Next day he went to see the missionary.

“What’s this I hear about your sister marrying Ginger Ted?” he asked him. “It’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“It’s true nevertheless.”

“You must do something about it. It’s madness.”

“My sister is of full age and entitled to do as she pleases.”

“But you don’t mean to tell me you approve of it. You know Ginger Ted. He’s a bum and there are no two ways about it. Have you told her the risk she’s running? I mean, bringing sinners to repentance and all that sort of thing’s all right, but there are limits. And does the leopard ever change his spots?”

Then for the first time in his life the Controleur saw a twinkle in the missionary’s eye.

“My sister is a very determined woman, Mr Gruyter,” he replied. “From that night they spent on the island he never had a chance.”

The Controleur gasped. He was as surprised as the prophet when the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? Perhaps Mr Jones was human after all.

“Allejezus!” muttered the Controleur.

Before anything more could be said Miss Jones swept into the room. She was radiant. She looked ten years younger. Her cheeks were flushed and her nose was hardly red at all.

“Have you come to congratulate me, Mr Gruyter?” she cried, and her manner was sprightly and girlish. “You see, I was right after all. Everyone has some good in them. You don’t know how splendid Edward has been all through this terrible time. He’s a hero. He’s a saint. Even I was surprised.”

“I hope you’ll be very happy, Miss Jones.”

“I know I shall. Oh, it would be wicked of me to doubt it. For it is the Lord who has brought us together.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know it. Don’t you see? Except for the cholera Edward would never have found himself. Except for the cholera we should never have learnt to know one another. I have never seen the hand of God more plainly manifest.”

The Controleur could not but think that it was rather a clumsy device to bring those two together that necessitated the death of six hundred innocent persons, but not being well versed in the ways of omnipotence he made no remark.

“You’ll never guess where we’re going for our honeymoon,” said Miss Jones, perhaps a trifle archly. “Java.”

“No, if you’ll lend us the launch, we’re going to that island where we were marooned. It has very tender recollections for both of us. It was there that I first guessed how fine and good Edward was. It’s there I want him to have his reward.”

The Controleur caught his breath. He left quickly, for he thought that unless he had a bottle of beer at once he would have a fit. He was never so shocked in his life.

THE DOOR OF OPPORTUNITY

THEY got a first-class carriage to themselves. It was lucky, because they were taking a good deal in with them, Alban’s suit-case and a hold-all, Anne’s dressing-case and her hat-box. They had two trunks in the van, containing what they wanted immediately, but all the rest of their luggage Alban had put in the care of an agent who was to take it up to London and store it till they had made up their minds what to do. They had a lot, pictures and books, curios that Alban had collected in the East, his guns and saddles. They had left Sondurah for ever. Alban, as was his way, tipped the porter generously and then went to the bookstall and bought papers. He bought the New Statesman and the Nation, and the Tatler and the Sketch, and the last number of the London Mercury. He came back to the carriage and threw them on the seat.

“It’s only an hour’s journey,” said Anne.

“I know, but I wanted to buy them. I’ve been starved so long. Isn’t it grand to think that tomorrow morning we shall have tomorrow’s Times, and the Express and the Mail?”

She did not answer and he turned away, for he saw coming towards them two persons, a man and his wife, who had been fellow-passengers from Singapore.

“Get through the Customs all right?” he cried to them cheerily.

The man seemed not to hear, for he walked straight on, but the woman answered.

“Yes, they never found the cigarettes.”

She saw Anne, gave her a friendly little smile, and passed on. Anne flushed.

“I was afraid they’d want to come in here,” said Alban. “Let’s have the carriage to ourselves if we can.”

She looked at him curiously.

“I don’t think you need worry,” she answered. “I don’t think anyone will come in.”

He lit a cigarette and lingered at the carriage door. On his face was a happy smile. When they had passed through the Red Sea and found a sharp wind in the Canal, Anne had been surprised to see how much the men who had looked presentable enough in the white ducks in which she had been accustomed to see them, were changed when they left them off for warmer clothes. They looked like nothing on earth then. Their ties were awful and their shirts all wrong. They wore grubby flannel trousers and shabby old golf-coats that had too obviously been bought off the nail, or blue serge suits that betrayed the provincial tailor. Most of the passengers had got off at Marseilles, but a dozen or so, either because after a long period in the East they thought the trip through the Bay would do them good, or, like themselves, for economy’s sake, had gone all the way to Tilbury, and now several of them walked along the platform. They wore solar topees or double-brimmed terais, and heavy greatcoats, or else shapeless soft hats or bowlers, not too well brushed, that looked too small for them. It was a shock to see them. They looked suburban and a trifle second-rate. But Alban had already a London look. There was not a speck of dust on his smart greatcoat, and his black Homburg hat looked brand-new. You would never have guessed that he had not been home for three years. His collar fitted closely round his neck and his foulard tie was neatly tied. As Anne looked at him she could not but think how good-looking he was. He was just under six feet tall, and slim, and he wore his clothes well, and his clothes were well cut. He had fair hair, still thick, and blue eyes and the faintly yellow skin common to men of that complexion after they have lost the pink-and-white freshness of early youth. There was no colour in his cheeks. It was a fine head, well-set on rather a long neck, with a somewhat prominent Adam’s apple; but you were more impressed with the distinction than with the beauty of his face. It was because his features were so regular, his nose so straight, his brow so broad that he photographed so well. Indeed, from his photographs you would have thought him extremely handsome. He was not that, perhaps because his eyebrows and his eyelashes were pale, and his lips thin, but he looked very intellectual. There was refinement in his face and a spirituality that was oddly moving. That was how you thought a poet should look; and when Anne became engaged to him she told her girl friends who asked her about him that he looked like Shelley. He turned to her now with a little smile in his blue eyes. His smile was very attractive.

“What a perfect day to land in England!”

It was October. They had steamed up the Channel on a grey sea under a grey sky. There was not a breath of wind. The fishing boats seemed to rest on the placid water as though the elements had for ever forgotten their old hostility: The coast was incredibly green, but with a bright cosy greenness quite unlike the luxuriant, vehement verdure of Eastern jungles. The red towns they passed here and there were comfortable and homelike. They seemed to welcome the exiles with a smiling friendliness. And when they drew into the estuary of the Thames they saw the rich levels of Essex and in a little while Chalk Church on the Kentish shore, lonely in the midst of weather-beaten trees, and beyond it the woods of Cobham. The sun, red in a faint mist, set on the marshes, and night fell. In the station the arc-lamps shed a light that spotted the darkness with cold hard patches. It was good to see the porters lumbering about in their grubby uniforms and the station-master fat and important in his bowler hat. The station-master blew a whistle and waved his arm. Alban stepped into the carriage and seated himself in the corner opposite to Anne. The train started.

“We’re due in London at six-ten,” said Alban. “We ought to get to Jermyn Street by seven. That’ll give us an hour to bath and change and we can get to the Savoy for dinner by eight-thirty. A bottle of pop tonight, my pet, and a slap-up dinner.” He gave a chuckle. “I heard the Strouds and the Maundrys arranging to meet at the Trocadero Grill-Room.”

He took up the papers and asked if she wanted any of them. Anne shook her head.

“Tired?” he smiled.

“No.”

“Excited?”

In order not to answer she gave a little laugh. He began to look at the papers, starting with the publishers’ advertisements, and she was conscious of the intense satisfaction it was to him to feel himself through them once more in the middle of things. They had taken in those same papers in Sondurah, but they arrived six weeks old, and though they kept them abreast of what was going on in the world that interested them both, they emphasized their exile. But these were fresh from the press. They smelt different. They had a crispness that was almost voluptuous. He wanted to read them all at once. Anne looked out of the window. The country was dark, and she could see little but the lights of their carriage reflected on the glass, but very soon the town encroached upon it, and then she saw little sordid houses, mile upon mile of them, with a light in a window here and there, and the chimneys made a dreary pattern against the sky. They passed through Barking and East Ham and Bromley-it was silly that the name on the platform as they went through the station should give her such a tremor-and then Stepney. Alban put down his papers.

“We shall be there in five minutes now.”

He put on his hat and took down from the racks the things the porter had put in them. He looked at her with shining eyes and his lips twitched. She saw that he was only just able to control his emotion. He looked out of the window, too, and they passed over brightly lighted thoroughfares, close packed with tram-cars, buses, and motor-vans, and they saw the streets thick with people. What a mob! The shops were all lit up. They saw the hawkers with their barrows at the kerb.

“London,” he said.

He took her hand and gently pressed it. His smile was so sweet that she had to say something. She tried to be facetious.

“Does it make you feel all funny inside?”

“I don’t know if I want to cry or if I want to be sick.”

Fenchurch Street. He lowered the window and waved his arm for a porter. With a grinding of brakes the train came to a standstill. A porter opened the door and Alban handed him out one package after another. Then in his polite way, having jumped out, he gave his hand to Anne to help her down to the platform. The porter went to fetch a barrow and they stood by the pile of their luggage. Alban waved to two passengers from the ship who passed them. The man nodded stiffly.

“What a comfort it is that we shall never have to be civil to those awful people any more,” said Alban lightly.

Anne gave him a quick glance. He was really incomprehensible. The porter came back with his barrow, the luggage was put on, and they followed him to collect their trunks. Alban took his wife’s arm and pressed it.

“The smell of London. By God, it’s grand.”

He rejoiced in the noise and the bustle, and the crowd of people who jostled them; the radiance of the arc-lamps and the black shadows they cast, sharp but full-toned, gave him a sense of elation. They got out into the street and the porter went off to get them a taxi. Alban’s eyes glittered as he looked at the buses and the policemen trying to direct the confusion. His distinguished face bore a look of something like inspiration. The taxi came. Their luggage was stowed away and piled up beside the driver, Alban gave the porter half-a-crown, and they drove off. They turned down Gracechurch Street and in Cannon Street were held up by a block in the traffic. Alban laughed out loud.

“What’s the matter?” said Anne.

“I’m so excited.”

They went along the Embankment. It was relatively quiet there. Taxis and cars passed them. The bells of the trams were music in his ears. At Westminster Bridge they cut across Parliament Square and drove through the green silence of St James’s Park. They had engaged a room at a hotel just off Jermyn Street. The reception clerk took them upstairs and a porter brought up their luggage. It was a room with twin beds and a bathroom.

“This looks all right,” said Alban. “It’ll do us till we can find a flat or something.”

He looked at his watch.

“Look here, darling, we shall only fall over one another if we try to unpack together. We’ve got oodles of time and it’ll take you longer to get straight and dress than me. I’ll clear out. I want to go to the club and see if there’s any mail for me. I’ve got my dinner jacket in my suit-case and it’ll only take me twenty minutes to have a bath and dress. Does that suit you?”

“Yes. That’s all right.”

“I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Very well.”

He took out of his pocket the little comb he always carried and passed it through his long fair hair. Then he put on his hat. He gave himself a glance in the mirror.

“Shall I turn on the bath for you?”

“No, don’t bother.”

“All right. So long.”

He went out.

When he was gone Anne took her dressing-case and her hat-box and put them on the top of her trunk. Then she rang the bell. She did not take off her hat. She sat down and lit a cigarette. When a servant answered the bell she asked for the porter. He came. She pointed to the luggage.

“Will you take those things and leave them in the hall for the present. I’ll tell you what to do with them presently.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

She gave him a florin. He took the trunk out and the other packages and closed the door behind him. A few tears slid down Anne’s cheeks, but she shook herself; she dried her eyes and powdered her face. She needed all her calm. She was glad that Alban had conceived the idea of going to his club. It made things easier and gave her a little time to think them out.

Now that the moment had come to do what she had for weeks determined, now that she must say the terrible things she had to say, she quailed. Her heart sank. She knew exactly what she meant to say to Alban, she had made up her mind about that long ago, and had said the very words to herself a hundred times, three or four times a day every day of the long journey from Singapore, but she was afraid that she would grow confused. She dreaded an argument. The thought of a scene made her feel slightly sick. It was something at all events to have an hour in which to collect herself. He would say she was heartless and cruel and unreasonable. She could not help it.

“No, no, no,” she cried aloud.

She shuddered with horror. And all at once she saw herself again in the bungalow, sitting as she had been sitting when the whole thing started. It was getting on towards tiffin time and in a few minutes Alban would be back from the office. It gave her pleasure to reflect that it was an attractive room for him to come back to, the large veranda which was their parlour, and she knew that though they had been there eighteen months he was still alive to the success she had made of it. The jalousies were drawn now against the midday sun, and the mellowed light filtering through them gave an impression of cool silence. Anne was house-proud, and though they were moved from district to district according to the exigencies of the Service and seldom stayed anywhere very long, at each new post she started with new enthusiasm to make their house cosy and charming. She was very modern. Visitors were surprised because there were no knick-knacks. They were taken aback by the bold colour of her curtains and could not at all make out the tinted reproductions of pictures by Marie Laurencin and Gauguin in silvered frames which were placed on the walls with such cunning skill. She was conscious that few of them quite approved, and the good ladies of Port Wallace and Pemberton thought such arrangements odd, affected, and out of place; but this left her calm. They would learn. It did them good to get a bit of a jolt. And now she looked round the long, spacious veranda with the complacent sigh of the artist satisfied with his work. It was gay. It was bare. It was restful. It refreshed the spirit and gently excited the fancy. Three immense bowls of yellow cannas completed the colour scheme. Her eyes lingered for a moment on the book-shelves filled with books; that was another thing that disconcerted the colony, all the books they had, and strange books too, heavy they thought them for the most part and she gave them a little affectionate look as though they were living things. Then she gave the piano a glance. A piece of music was still open on the rack, it was something of Debussy, and Alban had been playing it before he went to the office.

Her friends in the colony had condoled with her when Alban was appointed D.O. at Daktar, for it was the most isolated district in Sondurah. It was connected with the town which was the headquarters of the Government neither by telegraph nor telephone. But she liked it. They had been there for some time and she hoped they would remain till Alban went home on leave in another twelve months. It was as large as an English county, with a long coastline, and the sea was dotted with little islands. A broad, winding river ran through it, and on each side of this stretched hills densely covered with virgin forest. The station, a good way up the river, consisted of a row of Chinese shops and a native village nestling amid coconut trees, the District Office, the D.O.“s bungalow, the clerk’s quarters, and the barracks. Their only neighbours were the manager of a rubber estate a few miles up the river, and the manager and his assistant, Dutchmen both, of a timber camp on one of the river’s tributaries. The rubber estate’s launch went up and down twice a month and was their only means of regular communication with the outside world. But though they were lonely they were not dull. Their days were full. Their ponies waited for them at dawn and they rose while the day was still fresh and in the bridle-paths through the jungle lingered the mystery of the tropical night. They came back, bathed, changed, and had breakfast, and Alban went to the office. Anne spent the morning writing letters and working. She had fallen in love with the country from the first day she arrived in it and had taken pains to master the common language spoken. Her imagination was inflamed by the stories she heard of love and jealousy and death. She was told romantic tales of a time that was only just past. She sought to steep herself in the lore of those strange people. Both she and Alban read a great deal. They had for the country a considerable library and new books came from London by nearly every mail. Little that was noteworthy escaped them. Alban was fond of playing the piano. For an amateur he played very well. He had studied rather seriously, and he had an agreeable touch and a good ear; he could read music with ease, and it was always a pleasure to Anne to sit by him and follow the score when he tried something new. But their great delight was to tour the district. Sometimes they would be away for a fortnight at a time. They would go down the river in a prahu and then sail from one little island to another, bathe in the sea, and fish, or else row upstream till it grew shallow and the trees on either bank were so close to one another that you only saw a slim strip of sky between. Here the boatmen had to pole and they would spend the night in a native house. They bathed in a river pool so clear that you could see the sand shining silver at the bottom; and the spot was so lovely, so peaceful and remote, that you felt you could stay there for ever. Sometimes, on the other hand, they would tramp for days along the jungle paths, sleeping under canvas, and notwithstanding the mosquitoes that tormented them and the leeches that sucked their blood, enjoy every moment. Whoever slept so well as on a camp bed? And then there was the gladness of getting back, the delight in the comfort of the well-ordered establishment, the mail that had arrived with letters from home and all the papers, and the piano.

Alban would sit down to it then, his fingers itching to feel the keys, and in what he played, Stravinsky, Ravel, Darius Milhaud, she seemed to feel that he put in something of his own, the sounds of the jungle at night, dawn over the estuary, the starry nights, and the crystal clearness of the forest pools.

Sometimes the rain fell in sheets for days at a time. Then Alban worked at Chinese. He was learning it so that he could communicate with the Chinese of the country in their own language, and Anne did the thousand-and-one things for which she had not had time before. Those days brought them even more closely together; they always had plenty to talk about, and when they were occupied with their separate affairs they were pleased to feel in their bones that they were near to one another. They were wonderfully united. The rainy days that shut them up within the walls of the bungalow made them feel as if they were one body in face of the world.

On occasion they went to Port Wallace. It was a change, but Anne was always glad to get home. She was never quite at her ease there. She was conscious that none of the people they met liked Alban. They were very ordinary people, middle-class and suburban and dull, without any of the intellectual interests that made life so full and varied to Alban and her, and many of them were narrow-minded and ill-natured; but since they had to pass the better part of their lives in contact with them, it was tiresome that they should feel so unkindly towards Alban. They said he was conceited. He was always very pleasant with them, but she was aware that they resented his cordiality. When he tried to be jovial they said he was putting on airs, and when he chaffed them they thought he was being funny at their expense.

Once they stayed at Government House, and Mrs Hannay, the Governor’s wife, who liked her, talked to her about it. Perhaps the Governor had suggested that she should give Anne a hint.

“You know, my dear, it’s a pity your husband doesn’t try to be more come-hither with people. He’s very intelligent; don’t you think it would be better if he didn’t let others see he knows it quite so clearly? My husband said to me only yesterday: Of course I know Alban Torel is the cleverest young man in the Service, but he does manage to put my back up more than anyone I know. I am the Governor, but when he talks to me he always gives me the impression that he looks upon me as a damned fool.”

The worst of it was that Anne knew how low an opinion Alban had of the Governor’s parts.

“He doesn’t mean to be superior,” Anne answered, smiling. “And he really isn’t in the least conceited. I think it’s only because he has a straight nose and high cheek-bones.”

“You know, they don’t like him at the club. They call him Powder-Puff Percy.”

Anne flushed. She had heard that before and it made her very angry. Her eyes filled with tears.

“I think it’s frightfully unfair.”

Mrs Hannay took her hand and gave it an affectionate little squeeze.

“My dear, you know I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Your husband can’t help rising very high in the Service. He’d make things so much easier for himself if he were a little more human. Why doesn’t he play football?”

“It’s not his game. He’s always only too glad to play tennis.”

“He doesn’t give that impression. He gives the impression that there’s no one here who’s worth his while to play with.”

“Well, there isn’t,” said Anne stung.

Alban happened to be an extremely good tennis-player. He had played a lot of tournaments in England and Anne knew that it gave him a grim satisfaction to knock those beefy, hearty men all over the court. He could make the best of them look foolish. He could be maddening on the tennis court and Anne was aware that sometimes he could not resist the temptation.

“He does play to the gallery, doesn’t he?” said Mrs Hannay.

“I don’t think so. Believe me, Alban has no idea he isn’t popular. As far as I can see he’s always pleasant and friendly with everybody.”

“It’s then he’s most offensive,” said Mrs Hannay dryly.

“I know people don’t like us very much,” said Anne, smiling a little. “I’m very sorry, but really I don’t know what we can do about it.”

“Not you, my dear,” cried Mrs Hannay. “Everybody adores you. That’s why they put up with your husband. My dear, who could help liking you?”

“I don’t know why they should adore me,” said Anne.

But she did not say it quite sincerely. She was deliberately playing the part of the dear little woman and within her she bubbled with amusement. They disliked Alban because he had such an air of distinction, and because he was interested in art and literature; they did not understand these things and so thought them unmanly; and they disliked him because his capacity was greater than theirs. They disliked him because he was better bred than they. They thought him superior; well, he was superior, but not in the sense they meant. They forgave her because she was an ugly little thing. That was what she called herself, but she wasn’t that, or if she was it was with an ugliness that was most attractive. She was like a little monkey, but a very sweet little monkey and very human. She had a neat figure. That was her best point. That and her eyes. They were very large, of a deep brown, liquid and shining; they were full of fun, but they could be tender on occasion with a charming sympathy. She was dark, her frizzy hair was almost black, and her skin was swarthy; she had a small fleshy nose, with large nostrils, and much too big a mouth. But she was alert and vivacious. She could talk with a show of real interest to the ladies of the colony about their husbands and their servants and their children in England, and she could listen appreciatively to the men who told her stories that she had often heard before. They thought her a jolly good sort. They did not know what clever fun she made of them in private. It never occurred to them that she thought them narrow, gross, and pretentious. They found no glamour in the East because they looked at it vulgarly with material eyes. Romance lingered at their threshold and they drove it away like an importunate beggar. She was aloof. She repeated to herself Landor’s line:

“Nature I loved, and next to nature, art.”

She reflected on her conversation with Mrs Hannay, but on the whole it left her unconcerned. She wondered whether she should say anything about it to Alban; it had always seemed a little odd to her that he should be so little aware of his unpopularity; but she was afraid that if she told him of it he would become self-conscious. He never noticed the coldness of the men at the club. He made them feel shy and therefore uncomfortable. His appearance then caused a sort of awkwardness, but he, happily insensible, was breezily cordial to all and sundry. The fact was that he was strangely unconscious of other people. She was in a class by herself, she and a little group of friends they had in London, but he could never quite realize that the people of the colony, the government officials and the planters and their wives, were human beings. They were to him like pawns in a game. He laughed with them, chaffed them, and was amiably tolerant of them; with a chuckle Anne told herself that he was rather like the master of a preparatory school taking little boys out on a picnic and anxious to give them a good time.

She was afraid it wasn’t much good telling Alban. He was incapable of the dissimulation which, she happily realized, came so easily to her. What was one to do with these people? The men had come out to the colony as lads from second-rate schools, and life had taught them nothing. At fifty they had the outlook of hobbledehoys. Most of them drank a great deal too much. They read nothing worth reading. Their ambition was to be like everybody else. Their highest praise was to say that a man was a damned good sort. If you were interested in the things of the spirit you were a prig. They were eaten up with envy of one another and devoured by petty jealousies. And the women, poor things, were obsessed by petty rivalries. They made a circle that was more provincial than any in the smallest town in England. They were prudish and spiteful. What did it matter if they did not like Alban? They would have to put up with him because his ability was so great. He was clever and energetic. They could not say that he did not do his work well. He had been successful in every post he had occupied. With his sensitiveness and his imagination he understood the native mind and he was able to get the natives to do things that no one in his position could. He had a gift for languages, and he spoke all the local dialects. He not only knew the common tongue that most of the government officials spoke, but was acquainted with the niceties of the language and on occasion could make use of a ceremonial speech that flattered and impressed the chiefs. He had a gift for organization. He was not afraid of responsibility. In due course he was bound to be made a Resident. Alban had some interest in England; his father was a brigadier-general killed in the war, and though he had no private means he had influential friends. He spoke of them with pleasant irony.

“The great advantage of democratic government,” he said, “is that merit, with influence to back it, can be pretty sure of receiving its due reward.”

Alban was so obviously the ablest man in the Service that there seemed no reason why he should not eventually be made Governor. Then, thought Anne, his air of superiority, of which they complained, would be in place. They would accept him as their master and he would know how to make himself respected and obeyed. The position she foresaw did not dazzle her. She accepted it as a right. It would be fun for Alban to be Governor and for her to be the Governor’s wife. And what an opportunity! They were sheep, the government servants and the planters; when Government House was the seat of culture they would soon fall into line. When the best way to the Governor’s favour was to be intelligent, intelligence would become the fashion. She and Alban would cherish the native arts and collect carefully the memorials of a vanished past. The country would make an advance it had never dreamed of. They would develop it, but along lines of order and beauty. They would instil into their subordinates a passion for that beautiful land and a loving interest in these romantic races. They would make them realize what music meant. They would cultivate literature. They would create beauty. It would be the golden age.

Suddenly she heard Alban’s footstep. Anne awoke from her day-dream. All that was far away in the future. Alban was only a District Officer yet and what was important was the life they were living now. She heard Alban go into the bath-house and splash water over himself. In a minute he came in. He had changed into a shirt and shorts. His fair hair was still wet.

“Tiffin ready?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He sat down at the piano and played the piece that he had played in the morning. The silvery notes cascaded coolly down the sultry air. You had an impression of a formal garden with great trees and elegant pieces of artificial water and of leisurely walks bordered with pseudo-classical statues. Alban played with a peculiar delicacy. Lunch was announced by the head boy. He rose from the piano. They walked into the dining-room hand in hand. A punkah lazily fanned the air. Anne gave the table a glance. With its bright-coloured tablecloth and the amusing plates it looked very gay.

“Anything exciting at the office this morning?” she asked.

“No, nothing much. A buffalo case. Oh, and Prynne has sent along to ask me to go up to the estate. Some coolies have been damaging the trees and he wants me to come along and look into it.”

Prynne was manager of the rubber estate up the river and now and then they spent a night with him. Sometimes when he wanted a change he came down to dinner and slept at the D.O.“s bungalow. They both liked him. He was a man of five-and-thirty, with a red face, with deep furrows in it, and very black hair. He was quite uneducated, but cheerful and easy, and being the only Englishman within two days’ journey they could not but be friendly with him. He had been a little shy of them at first. News spreads quickly in the East and long before they arrived in the district he heard that they were highbrows. He did not know what he would make of them. He probably did not know that he had charm, which makes up for many more commendable qualities, and Alban with his almost feminine sensibilities was peculiarly susceptible to this. He found Alban much more human than he expected, and of course Anne was stunning. Alban played ragtime for him, which he would not have done for the Governor, and played dominoes with him. When Alban was making his first tour of the district with Anne, and suggested that they would like to spend a couple of nights on the estate, he had thought it as well to warn him that he lived with a native woman and had two children by her. He would do his best to keep them out of Anne’s sight, but he could not send them away, there was nowhere to send them. Alban laughed.

“Anne isn’t that sort of woman at all. Don’t dream of hiding them. She loves children.”

Anne quickly made friends with the shy, pretty little native woman and soon was playing happily with the children. She and the girl had long confidential chats. The children took a fancy to her. She brought them lovely toys from Port Wallace. Prynne, comparing her smiling tolerance with the disapproving acidity of the other white women of the colony, described himself as knocked all of a heap. He could not do enough to show his delight and gratitude.

“If all highbrows are like you,” he said, “give me highbrows every time.”

He hated to think that in another year they would leave the district for good and the chances were that, if the next D.O. was married, his wife would think it dreadful that, rather than live alone, he had a native woman to live with him and, what was more, was much attached to her.

But there had been a good deal of discontent on the estate of late. The coolies were Chinese and infected with communist ideas. They were disorderly. Alban had been obliged to sentence several of them for various crimes to terms of imprisonment.

“Prynne tells me that as soon as their term is up he’s going to send them all back to China and get Javanese instead,” said Alban. “I’m sure he’s right. They’re much more amenable.”

“You don’t think there’s going to be any serious trouble?”

“Oh, no. Prynne knows his job and he’s a pretty determined fellow. He wouldn’t put up with any nonsense and with me and our policemen to back him up I don’t imagine they’ll try any monkey tricks.” He smiled. “The iron hand in the velvet glove.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when a sudden shouting arose. There was a commotion and the sound of steps. Loud voices and cries.

“Tuan, Tuan.”

“What the devil’s the matter?”

Alban sprang from his chair and went swiftly on to the veranda. Anne followed him. At the bottom of the steps was a group of natives. There was the sergeant, and three or four policemen, boatmen, and several men from the kampong.

“What is it?” called Alban.

Two or three shouted back in answer. The sergeant pushed others aside and Alban saw lying on the ground a man in a shirt and khaki shorts. He ran down the steps. He recognized the man as the assistant manager of Prynne’s estate. He was a half-caste. His shorts were covered with blood and there was clotted blood all over one side of his face and head. He was unconscious.

“Bring him up here,” called Anne.

Alban gave an order. The man was lifted up and carried on to the veranda. They laid him on the floor and Anne put a pillow under his head. She sent for water and for the medicine-chest in which they kept things for emergency.

“Is he dead?” asked Alban.

“No.”

“Better try to give him some brandy.”

The boatmen brought ghastly news. The Chinese coolies had risen suddenly and attacked the manager’s office. Prynne was killed, and the assistant manager, Oakley by name, had escaped only by the skin of his teeth. He had come upon the rioters when they were looting the office, he had seen Prynne’s body thrown out of the window, and had taken to his heels. Some of the Chinese saw him and gave chase. He ran for the river and was wounded as he jumped into the launch. The launch managed to put off before the Chinese could get on board and they had come down-stream for help as fast as they could go. As they went they saw flames rising from the office buildings. There was no doubt that the coolies had burned down everything that would burn.

Oakley gave a groan and opened his eyes. He was a little, dark-skinned man, with flattened features and thick coarse hair. His great native eyes were filled with terror.

“You’re all right,” said Anne. “You’re quite safe.”

He gave a sigh and smiled. Anne washed his face and swabbed it with antiseptics. The wound on his head was not serious.

“Can you speak yet?” said Alban.

“Wait a bit,” she said. “We must look at his leg.”

Alban ordered the sergeant to get the crowd out of the veranda. Anne ripped up one leg of the shorts. The material was clinging to the coagulated wound.

“I’ve been bleeding like a pig,” said Oakley.

It was only a flesh wound. Alban was clever with his fingers, and though the blood began to flow again they staunched it. Alban put on a dressing and a bandage. The sergeant and a policeman lifted Oakley on to a long chair. Alban gave him a brandy and soda, and soon he felt strong enough to speak. He knew no more than the boatmen had already told. Prynne was dead and the estate was in flames.

“And the girl and the children?” asked Anne.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, Alban.”

“I must turn out the police. Are you sure Prynne is dead?”

“Yes, sir. I saw him.”

“Have the rioters got fire-arms?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“How d’you mean, you don’t know?” Alban cried irritably. “Prynne had a gun, hadn’t he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There must have been more on the estate. You had one, didn’t you? The head overseer had one.”

The half-caste was silent. Alban looked at him sternly.

“How many of those damned Chinese are there?”

“A hundred and fifty.”

Anne wondered that he asked so many questions. It seemed waste of time. The important thing was to collect coolies for the transport up-river, prepare the boats, and issue ammunition to the police.

“How many policemen have you got, sir?” asked Oakley.

“Eight and the sergeant.”

“Could I come too? That would make ten of us. I’m sure I shall be all right now I’m bandaged.”

“I’m not going,” said Alban.

“Alban, you must,” cried Anne. She could not believe her ears.

“Nonsense. It would be madness. Oakley’s obviously useless. He’s sure to have a temperature in a few hours. He’d only be in the way. That leaves nine guns. There are a hundred and fifty Chinese and they’ve got fire-arms and all the ammunition in the world.”

“How do’you know?”

“It stands to reason they wouldn’t have started a show like this unless they had. It would be idiotic to go.”

Anne stared at him with open mouth. Oakley’s eyes were puzzled.

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, fortunately we’ve got the launch. I’ll send it to Port Wallace with a request for reinforcements.”

“But they won’t be here for two days at least.”

“Well, what of it? Prynne’s dead and the estate burned to the ground. We couldn’t do any good by going up now. I shall send a native to reconnoitre so that we can find out exactly what the rioters are doing.” He gave Anne his charming smile. “Believe me, my pet, the rascals won’t lose anything by waiting a day or two for what’s coming to them.”

Oakley opened his mouth to speak, but perhaps he hadn’t the nerve. He was a half-caste assistant manager and Alban, the D.O., represented the power of the Government. But the man’s eyes sought Anne’s and she thought she read in them an earnest and personal appeal.

“But in two days they’re capable of committing the most frightful atrocities,” she cried. “It’s quite unspeakable what they may do.”

“Whatever damage they do they’ll pay for. I promise you that.”

“Oh, Alban, you can’t sit still and do nothing. I beseech you to go yourself at once.”

“Don’t be so silly. I can’t quell a riot with eight policemen and a sergeant. I haven’t got the right to take a risk of that sort. We’d have to go in boats. You don’t think we could get up unobserved. The lalang along the banks is perfect cover and they could just take pot shots at us as we came along. We shouldn’t have a chance.”

“I’m afraid they’ll only think it weakness if nothing is done for two days, sir,” said Oakley.

“When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it,” said Alban acidly. “So far as I can see when there was danger the only thing you did was to cut and run. I can’t persuade myself that your assistance in a crisis would be very valuable.”

The half-caste reddened. He said nothing more. He looked straight in front of him with troubled eyes.

“I’m going down to the office,” said Alban. “I’ll just write a short report and send it down the river by launch at once.”

He gave an order to the sergeant, who had been standing all this time stiffly at the top of the steps. He saluted and ran off. Alban went into a little hall they had to get his topee. Anne swiftly followed him.

“Alban, for God’s sake listen to me a minute,” she whispered.

“I don’t want to be rude to you, darling, but I am pressed for time. I think you’d much better mind your own business.”

“You can’t do nothing, Alban. You must go. Whatever the risk.”

“Don’t be such a fool,” he said angrily.

He had never been angry with her before. She seized his hand to hold him back.

“I tell you I can do no good by going.”

“You don’t know. There’s the woman and Prynne’s children. We must do something to save them. Let me come with you. They’ll kill them.”

“They’ve probably killed them already.”

“Oh, how can you be so callous! If there’s a chance of saving them it’s your duty to try.”

“It’s my duty to act like a reasonable human being. I’m not going to risk my life and my policemen’s for the sake of a native woman and her half-caste brats. What sort of a damned fool do you take me for?”

“They’ll say you were afraid.”

“Who?”

“Everyone in the colony.”

He smiled disdainfully.

“If you only knew what a complete contempt I have for the opinion of everyone in the colony.”

She gave him a long searching look. She had been married to him for eight years and she knew every expression of his face and every thought in his mind. She stared into his blue eyes as if they were open windows. She suddenly went quite pale. She dropped his hand and turned away. Without another word she went back on to the veranda. Her ugly little monkey face was a mask of horror.

Alban went to his office, wrote a brief account of the facts, and in a few minutes the motor launch was pounding down the river.

The next two days were endless. Escaped natives brought them news of happenings on the estate. But from their excited and terrified stories it was impossible to get an exact impression of the truth. There had been a good deal of bloodshed. The head overseer had been killed. They brought wild tales of cruelty and outrage. Anne could hear nothing of Prynne’s woman and the two children. She shuddered when she thought of what might have been their fate. Alban collected as many natives as he could. They were armed with spears and swords. He commandeered boats. The situation was serious, but he kept his head. He felt that he had done all that was possible and nothing remained but for him to carry on normally. He did his official work. He played the piano a great deal. He rode with Anne in the early morning. He appeared to have forgotten that they had had the first serious difference of opinion in the whole of their married life. He took it that Anne had accepted the wisdom of his decision. He was as amusing, cordial, and gay with her as he had always been. When he spoke of the rioters it was with grim irony: when the time came to settle matters a good many of them would wish they had never been born.

“What’ll happen to them?” asked Anne.

“Oh, they’ll hang.” He gave a shrug of distaste. “I hate having to be present at executions. It always makes me feel rather sick.”

He was very sympathetic to Oakley, whom they had put to bed and whom Anne was nursing. Perhaps he was sorry that in the exasperation of the moment he had spoken to him offensively, and he went out of his way to be nice to him.

Then on the afternoon of the third day, when they were drinking their coffee after luncheon, Alban’s quick ears caught the sound of a motor boat approaching. At the same moment a policeman ran up to say that the government launch was sighted.

“At last,” cried Alban.

He bolted out of the house. Anne raised one of the jalousies and looked out at the river. Now the sound was quite loud and in a moment she saw the boat come round the bend. She saw Alban on the landing-stage. He got into a prahu and as the launch dropped her anchor he went on board. She told Oakley that the reinforcements had come.

“Will the D.O. go up with them when they attack?” he asked her.

“Naturally,” said Anne coldly.

“I wondered.”

Anne felt a strange feeling in her heart. For the last two days she had had to exercise all her self-control not to cry. She did not answer. She went out of the room.

A quarter of an hour later Alban returned to the bungalow with the captain of constabulary who had been sent with twenty Sikhs to deal with the rioters. Captain Stratton was a little red-faced man with a red moustache and bow legs, very hearty and dashing, whom she had met often at Port Wallace.

“Well, Mrs Torel, this is a pretty kettle of fish,” he cried, as he shook hands with her, in a loud jolly voice. “Here I am, with my army all full of pep and ready for a scrap. Up, boys, and at “em. Have you got anything to drink in this benighted place?”

“Boy,” she cried, smiling.

“Something long and cool and faintly alcoholic, and then I’m ready to discuss the plan of campaign.”

His breeziness was very comforting. It blew away the sullen apprehension that had seemed ever since the disaster to brood over the lost peace of the bungalow. The boy came in with a tray and Stratton mixed himself a stengah. Alban put him in possession of the facts. He told them clearly, briefly, and with precision.

“I must say I admire you,” said Stratton. “In your place I should never have been able to resist the temptation to take my eight cops and have a whack at the blighters myself.”

“I thought it was a perfectly unjustifiable risk to take.”

“Safety first, old boy, eh, what?” said Stratton jovially. “I’m jolly glad you didn’t. It’s not often we get the chance of a scrap. It would have been a dirty trick to keep the whole show to yourself.”

Captain Stratton was all for steaming straight up the river and attacking at once, but Alban pointed out to him the inadvisability of such a course. The sound of the approaching launch would warn the rioters. The long grass at the river’s edge offered them cover and they had enough guns to make a landing difficult. It seemed useless to expose the attacking force to their fire. It was silly to forget that they had to face a hundred and fifty desperate men and it would be easy to fall into an ambush. Alban expounded his own plan. Stratton listened to it. He nodded now and then. The plan was evidently a good one. It would enable them to take the rioters in the rear, surprise them, and in all probability finish the job without a single casualty. He would have been a fool not to accept it.

“But why didn’t you do that yourself?” asked Stratton.

“With eight men and a sergeant?”

Stratton did not answer.

“Anyhow, it’s not a bad idea and we’ll settle on it. It gives us plenty of time, so with your permission, Mrs Torel, I’ll have a bath.”

They set out at sunset, Captain Stratton and his twenty Sikhs, Alban with his policemen and the natives he had collected. The night was dark and moonless. Trailing behind them were the dug-outs that Alban had gathered together and into which after a certain distance they proposed to transfer their force. It was important that no sound should give warning of their approach. After they had gone for about three hours by launch they took to the dug-outs and in them silently paddled up-stream. They reached the border of the vast estate and landed. Guides led them along a path so narrow that they had to march in single file. It had been long unused and the going was heavy. They had twice to ford a stream. The path led them circuitously to the rear of the coolie lines, but they did not wish to reach them till nearly dawn and presently Stratton gave the order to halt. It was a long cold wait. At last the night seemed to be less dark; you did not see the trunks of the trees, but were vaguely sensible of them against its darkness. Stratton had been sitting with his back to a tree. He gave a whispered order to a sergeant and in a few minutes the column was once more on the march. Suddenly they found themselves on a road. They formed fours. The dawn broke and in the ghostly light the surrounding objects were wanly visible. The column stopped on a whispered order. They had come in sight of the coolie lines. Silence reigned in them. The column crept on again and again halted. Stratton, his eyes shining, gave Alban a smile.

“We’ve caught the blighters asleep.”

He lined up his men. They inserted cartridges in their guns. He stepped forward and raised his hand. The carbines were pointed at the coolie lines.

“Fire.”

There was a rattle as the volley of shots rang out. Then suddenly there was a tremendous din and the Chinese poured out, shouting and waving their arms, but in front of them, to Alban’s utter bewilderment, bellowing at the top of his voice and shaking his fists at them, was a white man.

“Who the hell’s that?” cried Stratton.

A very big, very fat man, in khaki trousers and a singlet, was running towards them as fast as his fat legs would carry him and as he ran shaking both fists at them and yelling:

“Smerige flikkers! Vervloekte ploerten!”

“My God, it’s Van Hasseldt,” said Alban.

This was the Dutch manager of the timber camp which was situated on a considerable tributary of the river about twenty miles away.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he puffed as he came up to them.

“How the hell did you get here?” asked Stratton in turn.

He saw that the Chinese were scattering in all directions and gave his men instructions to round them up. Then he turned again to Van Hasseldt.

“What’s it mean?”

“Mean? Mean?” shouted the Dutchman furiously. “That’s what I want to know. You and your damned policemen. What do you mean by coming here at this hour in the morning and firing a damned volley. Target practice? You might have killed me. Idiots!”

“Have a cigarette,” said Stratton.

“How did you get here, Van Hasseldt?” asked Alban again, very much at sea. “This is the force they’ve sent from Port Wallace to quell the riot.”

“How did I get here? I walked. How did you think I got here? Riot be damned. I quelled the riot. If that’s what you came for you can take your damned policemen home again. A bullet came within a foot of my head.”

“I don’t understand,” said Alban.

“There’s nothing to understand,” spluttered Van Hasseldt, still fuming. “Some coolies came to my estate and said the Chinks had killed Prynne and burned the bally place down, so I took my assistant and my head overseer and a Dutch friend I had staying with me and came over to see what the trouble was.”

Captain Stratton opened his eyes wide.

“Did you just stroll in as if it was a picnic?” he asked.

“Well, you don’t think after all the years I’ve been in this country I’m going to let a couple of hundred Chinks put the fear of God into me? I found them all scared out of their lives. One of them had the nerve to pull a gun on me and I blew his bloody brains out. And the rest surrendered. I’ve got the leaders tied up. I was going to send a boat down to you this morning to come up and get them.”

Stratton stared at him for a minute and then burst into a shout of laughter, He laughed till the tears ran down his face. The Dutchman looked at him angrily, then began to laugh too; he laughed with the big belly laugh of a very fat man and his coils of fat heaved and shook. Alban watched them sullenly. He was very angry.

“What about Prynne’s girl and the kids?” he asked.

“Oh, they got away all right.”

It just showed how wise he had been not to let himself be influenced by Anne’s hysteria. Of course the children had come to no harm. He never thought they would.

Van Hasseldt and his little party started back for the timber camp, and as soon after as possible Stratton embarked his twenty Sikhs and leaving Alban with his sergeant and his policemen to deal with the situation departed for Port Wallace. Alban gave him a brief report for the Governor. There was much for him to do. It looked as though he would have to stay for a considerable time; but since every house on the estate had been burned to the ground and he was obliged to install himself in the coolie lines he thought it better that Anne should not join him. He sent her a note to that effect. He was glad to be able to reassure her of the safety of poor Prynne’s girl. He set to work at once to make his preliminary inquiry. He examined a host of witnesses. But a week later he received an order to go to Port Wallace at once. The launch that brought it was to take him and he was able to see Anne on the way down for no more than an hour. Alban was a trifle vexed.

“I don’t know why the Governor can’t leave me to get things straight without dragging me off like this. It’s extremely inconvenient.”

“Oh, well, the Government never bothers very much about the convenience of its subordinates, does it?” smiled Anne.

“It’s just red-tape. I would offer to take you along, darling, only I shan’t stay a minute longer than I need. I want to get my evidence together for the Sessions Court as soon as possible. I think in a country like this it’s very important that justice should be prompt.”

When the launch came in to Port Wallace one of the harbour police told him that the harbour-master had a chit for him. It was from the Governor’s secretary and informed him that His Excellency desired to see him as soon as convenient after his arrival. It was ten in the morning. Alban went to the club, had a bath and shaved, and then in clean ducks, his hair neatly brushed, he called a rickshaw and told the boy to take him to the Governor’s office. He was at once shown in to the secretary’s room. The secretary shook hands with him.

“I’ll tell H.E. you’re here,” he said. “Won’t you sit down?”

The secretary left the room and in a little while came back.

“H.E. will see you in a minute. Do you mind if I get on with my letters?”

Alban smiled. The secretary was not exactly come-hither. He waited, smoking a cigarette, and amused himself with his own thoughts. He was making a good job of the preliminary inquiry. It interested him. Then an orderly came in and told Alban that the Governor was ready for him. He rose from his seat and followed him into the Governor’s room.

“Good morning, Torel.”

“Good morning, sir.”

The Governor was sitting at a large desk. He nodded to Alban and motioned to him to take a seat. The Governor was all grey. His hair was grey, his face, his eyes; he looked as though the tropical suns had washed the colour out of him; he had been in the country for thirty years and had risen one by one through all the ranks of the Service; he looked tired and depressed. Even his voice was grey. Alban liked him because he was quiet; he did not think him clever, but he had an unrivalled knowledge of the country, and his great experience was a very good substitute for intelligence. He looked at Alban for a full moment without speaking and the odd idea came to Alban that he was embarrassed. He very nearly gave him a lead.

“I saw Van Hasseldt yesterday,” said the Governor suddenly.

“Yes, sir?”

“Will you give me your account of the occurrences at the Alud Estate and of the steps you took to deal with them.”

Alban had an orderly mind. He was self-possessed. He marshalled his facts well and was able to state them with precision. He chose his words with care and spoke them fluently.

“You had a sergeant and eight policemen. Why did you not immediately go to the scene of the disturbance?”

“I thought the risk was unjustifiable.”

A thin smile was outlined on the Governor’s grey face.

“If the officers of this Government had hesitated to take unjustifiable risks it would never have become a province of the British Empire.”

Alban was silent. It was difficult to talk to a man who spoke obvious nonsense.

“I am anxious to hear your reasons for the decision you took.”

Alban gave them coolly. He was quite convinced of the Tightness of his action. He repeated, but more fully, what he had said in the first place to Anne. The Governor listened attentively.

“Van Hasseldt, with his manager, a Dutch friend of his, and a native overseer, seems to have coped with the situation very efficiently,” said the Governor.

“He had a lucky break. That doesn’t prevent him from being a damned fool. It was madness to do what he did.”

“Do you realize that by leaving a Dutch planter to do what you should have done yourself, you have covered the Government with ridicule?”

“No, sir.”

“You’ve made yourself a laughing-stock in the whole colony.”

Alban smiled.

“My back is broad enough to bear the ridicule of persons to whose opinion I am entirely indifferent.”

“The utility of a government official depends very largely on his prestige, and I’m afraid his prestige is likely to be inconsiderable when he lies under the stigma of cowardice.”

Alban flushed a little.

“I don’t quite know what you mean by that, sir.”

“I’ve gone into the matter very carefully. I’ve seen Captain Stratton, and Oakley, poor Prynne’s assistant, and I’ve seen Van Hasseldt. I’ve listened to your defence.”

“I didn’t know that I was defending myself, sir.”

“Be so good as not to interrupt me. I think you committed a grave error of judgement. As it turns out, the risk was very small, but whatever it was, I think you should have taken it. In such matters promptness and firmness are essential. It is not for me to conjecture what motive led you to send for a force of constabulary and do nothing till they came. I am afraid, however, that I consider that your usefulness in the Service is no longer very great.”

Alban looked at him with astonishment.

“But would you have gone under the circumstances?” he asked him.

“I should.”

Alban shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t you believe me?” rapped out the Governor.

“Of course I believe you, sir. But perhaps you will allow me to say that if you had been killed the colony would have suffered an irreparable loss.”

The Governor drummed on the table with his fingers. He looked out of the window and then looked again at Alban. When he spoke it was not unkindly.

“I think you are unfitted by temperament for this rather rough-and-tumble life, Torel. If you’ll take my advice you’ll go home. With your abilities I feel sure that you’ll soon find an occupation much better suited to you.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean, sir.”

“Oh, come, Torel, you’re not stupid. I’m trying to make things easy for you. For your wife’s sake as well as for your own I do not wish you to leave the colony with the stigma of being dismissed from the Service for cowardice. I’m giving you the opportunity of resigning.”

“Thank you very much, sir. I’m not prepared to avail myself of the opportunity. If I resign I admit that I committed an error and that the charge you make against me is justified. I don’t admit it.”

“You can please yourself. I have considered the matter very carefully and I have no doubt about it in my mind. I am forced to discharge you from the Service. The necessary papers will reach you in due course. Meanwhile you will return to your post and hand over to the officer appointed to succeed you on his arrival.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Alban, a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “When do you desire me to return to my post?”

“At once.”

“Have you any objection to my going to the club and having tiffin before I go?”

The Governor looked at him with surprise. His exasperation was mingled with an unwilling admiration.

“Not at all. I’m sorry, Torel, that this unhappy incident should have deprived the Government of a servant whose zeal has always been so apparent and whose tact, intelligence, and industry seemed to point him out in the future for very high office.”

“Your Excellency does not read Schiller, I suppose. You are probably not acquainted with his celebrated line: mit der Dummheit kämpfen die Götter selbst vergebens.”

“What does it mean?”

“Roughly: Against stupidity the gods themselves battle in vain.”

“Good morning.”

With his head in the air, a smile on his lips, Alban left the Governor’s office. The Governor was human, and he had the curiosity to ask his secretary later in the day if Alban Torel had really gone to the club.

“Yes, sir. He had tiffin there.”

“It must have wanted some nerve.”

Alban entered the club jauntily and joined the group of men standing at the bar. He talked to them in the breezy, cordial tone he always used with them. It was designed to put them at their ease. They had been discussing him ever since Stratton had come back to Port Wallace with his story, sneering at him and laughing at him, and all who had resented his superciliousness, and they were the majority, were triumphant because his pride had had a fall. But they were so taken aback at seeing him now, so confused to find him as confident as ever, that it was they who were embarrassed.

One man, though he knew perfectly, asked him what he was doing in Port Wallace.

“Oh, I came about the riot on the Alud Estate. H.E. wanted to see me. He does not see eye to eye with me about it. The silly old ass has fired me. I’m going home as soon as he appoints a D.O. to take over.”

There was a moment of awkwardness. One, more kindly disposed than the others, said:

“I’m awfully sorry.”

Alban shrugged his shoulders.

“My dear fellow, what can you do with a perfect damned fool? The only thing is to let him stew in his own juice.”

When the Governor’s secretary had told his chief as much of this as he thought discreet, the Governor smiled.

“Courage is a queer thing. I would rather have shot myself than go to the club just then and face all those fellows.”

A fortnight later, having sold to the incoming D.O. all the decorations that Anne had taken so much trouble about, with the rest of their things in packing-cases and trunks, they arrived at Port Wallace to await the local steamer that was to take them to Singapore. The padre’s wife invited them to stay with her, but Anne refused; she insisted that they should go to the hotel. An hour after their arrival she received a very kind little letter from the Governor’s wife asking her to go and have tea with her. She went. She found Mrs Hannay alone, but in a minute the Governor joined them. He expressed his regret that she was leaving and told her how sorry he was for the cause.

“It’s very kind of you to say that,” said Anne, smiling gaily, “but you mustn’t think I take it to heart. I’m entirely on Alban’s side. I think what he did was absolutely right and if you don’t mind my saying so I think you’ve treated him most unjustly.”

“Believe me, I hated having to take the step I took.”

“Don’t let’s talk about it,” said Anne.

“What are your plans when you get home? asked Mrs Hannay.

Anne began to chat brightly. You would have thought she had not a care in the world. She seemed in great spirits at going home. She was jolly and amusing and made little jokes. When she took leave of the Governor and his wife she thanked them for all their kindness. The Governor escorted her to the door.

The next day but one, after dinner, they went on board the clean and comfortable little ship. The padre and his wife saw them off. When they went into their cabin they found a large parcel on Anne’s bunk. It was addressed to Alban. He opened it and saw that it was an immense powder-puff.

“Hullo, I wonder who sent us this,” he said, with a laugh. “It must be for you, darling.”

Anne gave him a quick look. She went pale. The brutes! How could they be so cruel? She forced herself to smile.

“It’s enormous, isn’t it? I’ve never seen such a large powder-puff in my life.”

But when he had left the cabin and they were out at sea, she threw it passionately overboard.

And now, now that they were back in London and Sondurah was nine thousand miles away, she clenched her hands as she thought of it. Somehow, it seemed the worst thing of all. It was so wantonly unkind to send that absurd object to Alban, Powder-Puff Percy; it showed such a petty spite. Was that their idea of humour? Nothing had hurt her more and even now she felt that it was only by holding on to herself that she could prevent herself from crying. Suddenly she started, for the door opened and Alban came in. She was still sitting in the chair in which he had left her.

“Hullo, why haven’t you dressed?” He looked about the room. “You haven’t unpacked.”

“No.”

“Why on earth not?”

“I’m not going to unpack. I’m not going to stay here. I’m leaving you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve stuck it out till now. I made up my mind I would till we got home. I set my teeth, I’ve borne more than I thought it possible to bear, but now it’s finished. I’ve done all that could be expected of me. We’re back in London now and I can go.”

He looked at her in utter bewilderment.

“Are you mad, Anne?”

“Oh, my God, what I’ve endured! The journey to Singapore, with all the officers knowing, and even the Chinese stewards. And at Singapore, the way people looked at us at the hotel, and the sympathy I had to put up with, the bricks they dropped and their embarrassment when they realized what they’d done. My God, I could have killed them. That interminable journey home. There wasn’t a single passenger on the ship who didn’t know. The contempt they had for you and the kindness they went out of their way to show me. And you so self-complacent and so pleased with yourself, seeing nothing, feeling nothing. You must have the hide of a rhinoceros. The misery of seeing you so chatty and agreeable. Pariahs, that’s what we were. You seemed to ask them to snub you. How can anyone be so shameless?”

She was flaming with passion. Now that at last she need not wear the mask of indifference and pride that she had forced herself to assume she cast aside all reserve and all self-control. The words poured from her trembling lips in a virulent stream.

“My dear, how can you be so absurd?” he said good-naturedly, smiling. “You must be very nervous and high-strung to have got such ideas in your head. Why didn’t you tell me? You’re like a country bumpkin who comes to London and thinks everyone is staring at him. Nobody bothered about us, and if they did what on earth did it matter? You ought to have more sense than to bother about what a lot of fools say. And what do you imagine they were saying?”

“They were saying you’d been fired.”

“Well, that was true,” he laughed.

“They said you were a coward.”

“What of it?”

“Well, you see, that was true too.”

He looked at her for a moment reflectively. His lips tightened a little.

“And what makes you think so?” he asked acidly.

“I saw it in your eyes, that day the news came, when you refused to go to the estate and I followed you into the hall when you went to fetch your topee. I begged you to go, I felt that whatever the danger you must take it, and suddenly I saw the fear in your eyes. I nearly fainted with the horror.”

“I should have been a fool to risk my life to no purpose. Why should I? Nothing that concerned me was at stake. Courage is the obvious virtue of the stupid. I don’t attach any particular importance to it.”

“How do you mean that nothing that concerned you was at stake? If that’s true then your whole life is a sham. You’ve given away everything you stood for, everything we both stand for. You’ve let all of us down. We did set ourselves up on a pinnacle, we did think ourselves better than the rest of them because we loved literature and art and music, we weren’t content to live a life of ignoble jealousies and vulgar tittle-tattle, we did cherish the things of the spirit, and we loved beauty. It was our food and drink. They laughed at us and sneered at us. That was inevitable. The ignorant and the common naturally hate and fear those who are interested in things they don’t understand. We didn’t care. We called them Philistines. We despised them and we had a right to despise them. Our justification was that we were better and nobler and wiser and braver than they were. And you weren’t better, you weren’t nobler, you weren’t braver. When the crisis came you slunk away like a whipped cur with his tail between his legs. You of all people hadn’t the right to be a coward. They despise us now and they have the right to despise us. Us and all we stood for. Now they can say that art and beauty are all rot; when it comes to a pinch people like us always let you down. They never stopped looking for a chance to turn and rend us and you gave it to them. They can say that they always expected it. It’s a triumph for them. I used to be furious because they called you Powder-Puff Percy. Did you know they did?”

“Of course. I thought it very vulgar, but it left me entirely indifferent.”

“It’s funny that their instinct should have been so right.”

“Do you mean to say you’ve been harbouring this against me all these weeks? I should never have thought you capable of it.”

“I couldn’t let you down when everyone was against you. I was too proud for that. Whatever happened I swore to myself that I’d stick to you till we got home. It’s been torture.”

“Don’t you love me any more?”

“Love you? I loathe the very sight of you.”

“Anne!”

“God knows I loved you. For eight years I worshipped the ground you trod on. You were everything to me. I believed in you as some people believe in God. When I saw the fear in your eyes that day, when you told me that you weren’t going to risk your life for a kept woman and her half-caste brats, I was shattered. It was as though someone had wrenched my heart out of my body and trampled on it. You killed my love there and then, Alban. You killed it stone-dead. Since then when you’ve kissed me I’ve had to clench my hands so as not to turn my face away. The mere thought of anything else makes me feel physically sick. I loathe your complacence and your frightful insensitiveness. Perhaps I could have forgiven it if it had been just a moment’s weakness and if afterwards you’d been ashamed. I should have been miserable, but I think my love was so great that I should only have felt pity for you. But you’re incapable of shame. And now I believe in nothing. You’re only a silly, pretentious, vulgar poseur. I would rather be the wife of a second-rate planter so long as he had the common human virtues of a man than the wife of a fake like you.”

He did not answer. Gradually his face began to discompose. Those handsome, regular features of his horribly distorted and suddenly he broke out into loud sobs. She gave a little cry.

“Don’t Alban, don’t.”

“Oh, darling, how can you be so cruel to me? I adore you. I’d give my whole life to please you. I can’t live without you.”

She put out her arms as though to ward off a blow.

“No, no, Alban, don’t try to move me. I can’t. I must go. I can’t live with you any more. It would be frightful. I can never forget. I must tell you the truth, I have only contempt for you and repulsion.”

He sank down at her feet and tried to cling to her knees. With a gasp she sprang up and he buried his head in the empty chair. He cried painfully with sobs that tore his chest. The sound was horrible. The tears streamed from Anne’s eyes and, putting her hands to her ears to shut out that dreadful, hysterical sobbing, blindly stumbling she rushed to the door and ran out.

NEIL MACADAM

CAPTAIN BREDON was good-natured. When Angus Munro, the Curator of the museum at Kuala Solor, told him that he had advised Neil MacAdam, his new assistant, on his arrival at Singapore to put up at the Van Dyke Hotel, and asked him to see that the lad got into no mischief during the few days he must spend there, he said he would do his best. Captain Bredon commanded the Sultan Ahmed, and when he was at Singapore always stayed at the Van Dyke. He had a Japanese wife and kept a room there. It was his home. When he got back after his fortnight’s trip along the coast of Borneo the Dutch manager told him that Neil had been there for two days. The boy was sitting in the little dusty garden of the hotel reading old numbers of The Straits Times. Captain Bredon took a look at him first and then went up.

“You’re MacAdam, aren’t you?”

Neil rose to his feet, flushed to the roots of his hair, and answered shyly: “I am.”

“My name’s Bredon. I’m skipper of the Sultan Ahmed. You’re sailing with me next Tuesday. Munro asked me to look after you. What about a stengah? I suppose you’ve learned what that means by now.”

“Thank you very much, but I don’t drink.”

He spoke with a broad Scots accent.

“I don’t blame you. Drink’s been the ruin of many a good man in this country.”

He called the Chinese boy and ordered himself a double whisky and a small soda.

“What have you been doing with yourself since you got in?”

“Walking about.”

“There’s nothing much to see in Singapore.”

“I’ve found plenty.”

Of course the first thing he had done was to go to the museum. There was little that he had not seen at home, but the fact that those beasts and birds, those reptiles, moths, butterflies, and insects were native to the country excited him. There was one section devoted to that part of Borneo of which Kuala Solor was the capital, and since these were the creatures that for the next three years would chiefly concern him, he examined them with attention. But it was outside, in the streets, that it was most thrilling, and except that he was a grave and sober young man he would have laughed aloud with joy. Everything was new to him. He walked till he was footsore. He stood at the corner of a busy street and wondered at the long line of rickshaws and the little men between the shafts running with dogged steps. He stood on a bridge over a canal and looked at the sampans wedged up against one another like sardines in a tin. He peered into the Chinese shops in Victoria Road where so many strange things were sold. Bombay merchants, fat and exuberant, stood at their shop doors and sought to sell him silks and tinsel jewellery. He watched the Tamils, pensive and forlorn, who walked with a sinister grace, and the bearded Arabs, in white skull-caps, who bore themselves with scornful dignity. The sun shone upon the varied scene with hard, acrid brilliance. He was confused. He thought it would take him years to find his bearings in this multi-coloured and excessive world.

After dinner that night Captain Bredon asked him if he would like to go round the town.

“You ought to see a bit of life while you’re here,” he said.

They stepped into rickshaws and drove to the Chinese quarter. The Captain, who never drank at sea, had been making up for his abstinence during the day. He was feeling good. The rickshaws stopped at a house in a side street and they knocked at the door. It was opened and they passed through a narrow passage into a large room with benches all round it covered with red plush. A number of women were sitting about-French, Italian, and American. A mechanical piano was grinding out harsh music and a few couples were dancing. Captain Bredon ordered drinks. Two or three women, waiting for an invitation, gave them inviting glances.

“Well, young feller, is there anyone you fancy here?” the Captain asked facetiously.

“To sleep with, d’you mean? No.”

“No white girls where you’re going, you know.”

“Oh, well.”

“Like to go an’ see some natives?”

“I don’t mind.”

The Captain paid for the drinks and they strolled on. They went to another house. Here the girls were Chinese, small and dainty, with tiny feet and hands like flowers, and they wore suits of flowered silk. But their painted faces were like masks. They looked at the strangers with black derisive eyes. They were strangely inhuman.

“I brought you here because I thought you ought to see the place,” said Captain Bredon, with the air of a man doing his bounden duty, “but just look-see is all. They don’t like us for some reason. In some of these Chinese joints they won’t even let a white man in. Fact is, they say we stink. Funny, ain’t it? They say we smell of corpses.”

“We?”

“Give me Japs,” said the Captain. “They’re fine. My wife’s a Jap, you know.

You come along with me and I’ll take you to a place where they have Japanese girls, and if you don’t see something you like there I’m a Dutchman.”

Their rickshaws were waiting and they stepped into them. Captain Bredon gave a direction and the boys started off. They were let into the house by a stout middle-aged Japanese woman, who bowed low as they entered. She took them into a neat, clean room furnished only with mats on the floor; they sat down and presently a little girl came in with a tray on which were two bowls of pale tea. With a shy bow she handed one to each of them. The Captain spoke to the middle-aged woman and she looked at Neil and giggled. She said something to the child, who went out, and presently four girls tripped in. They were sweet in their kimonos, with the shining black hair artfully dressed; they were small and plump, with round faces and laughing eyes. They bowed low as they came in and with good manners murmured polite greetings. Their speech sounded like the twittering of birds. Then they knelt, one on each side of the two men, and charmingly flirted with them. Captain Bredon soon had his arms round two slim waists. They all talked nineteen to the dozen. They were very gay. It seemed to Neil that the Captain’s girls were mocking him, for their gleaming eyes were mischievously turned towards him, and he blushed. But the other two cuddled up to him, smiling, and spoke in Japanese as though he understood every word they said. They seemed so happy and guileless that he laughed. They were very attentive. They handed him the bowl so that he should drink his tea, and then took it from him so that he should not have the trouble of holding it. They lit his cigarette for him and one put out a small, delicate hand to take the ash so that it should not fall on his clothes. They stroked his smooth face and looked with curiosity at his large young hands. They were as playful as kittens.

“Well, which is it to be?” said the Captain after a while. “Made your choice yet?”

“What d’you mean?”

“I’ll just wait and see you settled and then I’ll fix myself up.”

“Oh, I don’t want either of them. I’m going home to bed.”

“Why, what’s the matter? You’re not scared, are you?”

“No, I just don’t fancy it. But don’t let me stand in your way. I’ll get back to the hotel all right.”

“Oh, if you’re not going to do anything I won’t either. I only wanted to be matey.”

He spoke to the middle-aged woman and what he said caused the girls to look at Neil with sudden surprise. She answered and the Captain shrugged his shoulders. Then one of the girls made a remark that set them all laughing.

“What does she say?” asked Neil.

“She’s pulling your leg,” replied the Captain, smiling.

But he gave Neil a curious look. The girl, having made them laugh once, now said something directly to Neil. He could not understand, but the mockery of her eyes made him blush and frown. He did not like to be made fun of. Then she laughed outright and throwing her arm round his neck lightly kissed him.

“Come on, let’s be going,” said the Captain.

When they dismissed their rickshaws and walked into the hotel Neil asked him:

“What was it that girl said that made them all laugh?”

“She said you were a virgin.”

“I don’t see anything to laugh at in that,” said Neil, with his slow Scots accent.

“Is it true?”

“I suppose it is.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Till I marry.”

The Captain was silent. At the top of the stairs he held out his hand. There was a twinkle in his eyes when he bade the lad good night, but Neil met it with a level, candid, and untroubled gaze.

Three days later they sailed. Neil was the only white passenger. When the Captain was busy he read. He was reading again Wallace’s Malay Archipelago. He had read it as a boy, but now it had a new and absorbing interest for him. When the Captain was at leisure they played cribbage or sat in long chairs on the deck, smoking, and talked. Neil was the son of a country doctor, and he could not remember when he had not been interested in natural history. When he had done with school he went to the University of Edinburgh and there took a B.Sc. with Honours. He was looking out for a job as demonstrator in biology when he chanced to see in Nature an advertisement for an assistant curator of the museum at Kuala Solor. The Curator, Angus Munro, had been at Edinburgh with his uncle, a Glasgow merchant, and his uncle wrote to ask him if he would give the boy a trial. Though Neil was especially interested in entomology he was a trained taxidermist, which the advertisement said was essential; he enclosed certificates from Neil’s old teachers; he added that Neil had played football for his university. In a few weeks a cable arrived engaging him and a fortnight later he sailed.

“What’s Mr Munro like?” asked Neil.

“Good fellow. Everybody likes him.”

“I looked out his papers in the scientific journals. He had one in the last number of The Ibis on the Gymnathids.”

“I don’t know anything about that. I know he’s got a Russian wife. They don’t like her much.”

“I got a letter from him at Singapore saying they’d put me up for a bit till I could look round and see what I wanted to do.”

Now they were steaming up the river. At the mouth was a straggling fishermen’s village standing on piles on the water; on the bank grew thickly nipah palm and the tortured mangrove; beyond stretched the dense green of the virgin forest. In the distance, darkly silhouetted against the blue sky, was the rugged outline of a mountain. Neil, his heart beating with the excitement that possessed him, devoured the scene with eager eyes. He was surprised. He knew his Conrad almost by heart and he was expecting a land of brooding mystery. He was not prepared for the blue milky sky. Little white clouds on the horizon, like sailing boats becalmed, shone in the sun. The green trees of the forest glittered in the brilliant light. Here and there, on the banks, were Malay houses with thatched roofs, and they nestled cosily among fruit trees. Natives in dugouts rowed, standing, up the river. Neil had no feeling of being shut in, nor, in that radiant morning, of gloom, but of space and freedom. The country offered him a gracious welcome. He knew he was going to be happy in it. Captain Bredon from the bridge threw a friendly glance at the lad standing below him. He had taken quite a fancy to him during the four days the journey had lasted. It was true he did not drink, and when you made a joke he was as likely as not to take you seriously, but there was something very taking in his seriousness; everything was interesting and important to him-that, of course, was why he did not find your jokes amusing; but even though he didn’t see them he laughed, because he felt you expected it. He laughed because life was grand. He was grateful for every little thing you told him. He was very polite. He never asked you to pass him anything without saying “please’ and always said “thank you’ when you gave it. And he was a good-looking fellow, no one could deny that. Neil was standing with his hands on the rail, bare-headed, looking at the passing bank. He was tall, six foot two, with long, loose limbs, broad shoulders, and narrow hips; there was something charmingly coltish about him, so that you expected him at any moment to break into a caper. He had brown curly hair with a peculiar shine in it; sometimes when the light caught it, it glittered like gold. His eyes, large and very blue, shone with good-humour. They reflected his happy disposition. His nose was short and blunt and his mouth big, his chin determined; his face was rather broad. But his most striking feature was his skin; it was very white and smooth, with a lovely patch of red on either cheek. It would have been a beautiful skin even for a woman. Captain Bredon made the same joke to him every morning.

“Well, my lad, have you shaved today?”

Neil passed his hand over his chin.

“No, d’you think I need it?”

The Captain always laughed at this.

“Need it? Why, you’ve got a face like a baby’s bottom.”

And invariably Neil reddened to the roots of his hair.

“I shave once a week,” he retorted.

But it wasn’t only his looks that made you like him. It was his ingenuousness, his candour, and the freshness with which he confronted the world. For all his intentness and the solemn way in which he took everything, and his inclination to argue upon every point that came up, there was something strangely simple in him that gave you quite an odd feeling. The Captain couldn’t make it out.

“I wonder if it’s because he’s never had a woman,” he said to himself. “Funny. I should have thought the girls never left him alone. With a complexion like that.”

But the Sultan Ahmed was nearing the bend after rounding which Kuala Solor would be in sight and the Captain’s reflections were interrupted by the necessities of his work. He rang down to the engine room. The ship slackened to half speed. Kuala Solor straggled along the left bank of the river, a white, neat, and trim little town, and on the right on a hill were the fort and the Sultan’s palace. There was a breeze and the Sultan’s flag, at the top of a tall staff, waved bravely against the sky. They anchored in mid-stream. The doctor and a police officer came on board in the government launch. They were accompanied by a tall thin man in white ducks. The Captain stood at the head of the gangway and shook hands with them. Then he turned to the last comer.

“Well, I’ve brought you your young hopeful safe and sound.” And a glance at Neil: “This is Munro.”

The tall thin man held out his hand and gave Neil an appraising look. Neil flushed a little and smiled. He had beautiful teeth.

“How do you do, sir?”

Munro did not smile with his lips, but faintly with his grey eyes. His cheeks were hollow and he had a thin aquiline nose and pale lips. He was deeply sunburned. His face looked tired, but his expression was very gentle, and Neil immediately felt confidence in him. The Captain introduced him to the doctor and the policeman and suggested that they should have a drink. When they sat down and the boy brought bottles of beer Munro took off his topee. Neil saw that he had close-cropped brown hair turning grey. He was a man of forty, quiet, self-possessed in manner, with an intellectual air that distinguished him from the brisk little doctor and the heavy swaggering police officer.

“MacAdam doesn’t drink,” said the Captain when the boy poured out four glasses of beer.”

“All the better,” said Munro. “I hope you haven’t been trying to lure him into evil ways.”

“I tried to in Singapore,” returned the Captain, with a twinkle in his eyes, “but there was nothing doing.”

When he had finished his beer Munro turned to Neil.

“Well, we’ll be getting ashore, shall we?”

Neil’s baggage was put in charge of Munro’s boy and the two men got into a sampan. They landed.

“Do you want to go straight up to the bungalow or would you like to have a look round first? We’ve got a couple of hours before tiffin.”

“Couldn’t we go to the museum?” said Neil.

Munro’s eyes smiled gently. He was pleased. Neil was shy and Munro not by nature talkative, so they walked in silence. By the river were the native huts, and here, living their immemorial lives, dwelt the Malays. They were busy, but without haste, and you were conscious of a happy, normal activity. There was a sense of the rhythm of life of which the pattern was birth and death, love, and the affairs common to mankind. They came to the bazaars, narrow streets with arcades, where the teeming Chinese, working and eating, noisily talking, as is their way, indefatigably strove with eternity.

“It’s not much after Singapore,” said Munro, “but I always think it’s rather picturesque.”

He spoke with an accent less broad than Neil’s but the Scots burr was there and it put Neil at his ease. He could never quite get it out of his head that the English of English people was affected.

The museum was a handsome stone building and as they entered its portals Munro instinctively straightened himself. The attendant at the door saluted and Munro spoke to him in Malay, evidently explaining who Neil was, for the attendant gave him a smile and saluted again. It was cool in there in comparison with the heat without and the light was pleasant after the glare of the street.

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” said Munro. “We haven’t got half the things we ought to have, but up to now we’ve been handicapped by lack of money. We’ve had to do the best we could. So you must make allowances.”

Neil stepped in like a swimmer diving confidently into a summer sea. The specimens were admirably arranged. Munro had sought to please as well as to instruct, and birds and beasts and reptiles were presented, as far as possible in their natural surroundings, in such a way as to give a vivid impression of life. Neil lost his shyness and began with boyish enthusiasm to talk of this and that. He asked an infinity of questions. He was excited. Neither of them was conscious of the passage of time, and when Munro glanced at his watch he was surprised to see what the hour was. They got into rickshaws and drove to the bungalow.

Munro led the young man into a drawing-room. A woman was lying on a sofa reading a book and as they came in she slowly rose.

“This is my wife. I’m afraid we’re dreadfully late, Darya.”

“What does it matter?” she smiled. “What is more unimportant than time?”

She held out her hand, a rather large hand, to Neil and gave him a long, reflective, but friendly look.

“I suppose you’ve been showing him the museum.”

She was a woman of five-and-thirty, of medium height, with a pale brown face of a uniform colour and pale blue eyes. Her hair, parted in the middle and wound into a knot on the nape of her neck, was untidy; it had a moth-like quality and was of a curious pale brown. Her face was broad, with high cheekbones, and she had a rather fleshy nose. She was not a pretty woman, but there was in her slow movements a sensual grace and in her manner as it were a physical casualness that only very dull people could have failed to find interesting. She wore a frock of green cotton. She spoke English perfectly, but with a slight accent.

They sat down to tiffin. Neil was overcome once more with shyness, but Darya did not seem to notice it. She talked freely and easily. She asked him about his journey and what he had thought of Singapore. She told him about the people he would have to meet. That afternoon Munro was to take him to call on the Resident, the Sultan being away, and later they would go to the club. There he would see everybody.

“You will be popular,” she said, her pale blue eyes resting on him with attention. A man less ingenuous than Neil might have noticed that she took stock of his size and youthful virility, his shiny curling hair and his lovely skin. “They don’t think much of us.”

“Oh, nonsense, Darya. You’re too sensitive. They’re English, that’s all.”

“They think it’s rather funny of Angus to be a scientist and they think it’s rather vulgar of me to be a Russian. I don’t care. They’re fools. They’re the most commonplace, the most narrow-minded, the most conventional people it has ever been my misfortune to live amongst.”

“Don’t put MacAdam off the moment he arrives. He’ll find them kind and hospitable.”

“What is your first name?” she asked the boy.

“Neil.”

“I shall call you by it. And you must call me Darya. I hate being called Mrs Munro. It makes me feel like a minister’s wife.”

Neil blushed. He was embarrassed that she should ask him so soon to be so familiar. She went on.

“Some of the men are not bad.”

“They do their job competently and that’s what they’re here for,” said Munro.

“They shoot. They play football and tennis and cricket. I get on with them quite well. The women are intolerable. They are jealous and spiteful and lazy. They can talk of nothing. If you introduce an intellectual subject they look down their noses as though you were indecent. What can they talk about now? They’re interested in nothing. If you speak of the body they think you improper, and if you speak of the soul they think you priggish.”

“You mustn’t take what my wife says too literally,” smiled Munro, in his gentle, tolerant way. “The community here is just like any other in the East, neither very clever, nor very stupid, but amiable and kindly. And that’s a good deal.”

“I don’t want people to be amiable and kindly. I want them to be vital and passionate. I want them to be interested in mankind. I want them to attach more importance to the things of the spirit than to a gin pahit or a curry tiffin. I want art to matter to them, and literature.” She addressed herself abruptly to Neil: “Have you got a soul?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what you mean.”

“Why do you blush when I ask you? Why should you be ashamed of your soul? It is what is important in you. Tell me about it. I am interested in you and I want to know.”

It seemed very awkward to Neil to be tackled in this way by a perfect stranger. He had never met anyone like this. But he was a serious young man and when he was asked a question straight out he did his best to answer it. It was Munro’s presence that embarrassed him.

“I don’t know what you mean by the soul. If you mean an immaterial or spiritual entity, separately produced by the creator, in temporary conjunction with the material body, then my answer is in the negative. It seems to me that such a radically dualistic view of human personality cannot be defended by anyone who is able to take a calm view of the evidence. If, on the other hand, you mean by soul the aggregate of psychic elements which form what we know as the personality of the individual, then, of course, I have.”

“You’re very sweet and you’re wonderfully handsome,” she said, smiling. “No, I mean the heart with its longings and the body with its desires and the infinite in us. Tell me, what did you read on the journey, or did you only play deck tennis?”

Neil was taken aback at the inconsequence of her reply. He would have been a little affronted except for the good-humour in her eyes and the naturalness in her manner. Munro smiled quietly at the young man’s bewilderment, when he smiled the lines that ran from the wings of his nostrils to the corners of his mouth became deep furrows.

“I read a lot of Conrad.”

“For pleasure or to improve your mind?”

“Both. I admire him awfully.”

Darya threw up her arms in an extravagant gesture of protest.

“That Pole,” she cried. “How can you English ever have let yourselves be taken in by that wordy mountebank? He was all the superficiality of his countrymen. That stream of words, those involved sentences, the showy rhetoric, that affection of profundity: when you get through all that to the thought at the bottom, what do you find but a trivial commonplace? He was like a second-rate actor who puts on a romantic dress and declaims a play by Victor Hugo. For five minutes you say this is heroic, and then your whole soul revolts and you cry, no, this is false, false, false.”

She spoke with a passion that Neil had never known anyone show when speaking of art or literature. Her cheeks, usually colourless, flushed and her pale eyes glowed.

“There’s no one who got atmosphere like Conrad,” said Neil. “I can smell and see and feel the East when I read him.”

“Nonsense. What do you know about the East? Everyone will tell you that he made the grossest blunders. Ask Angus.”

“Of course he was not always accurate,” said Munro, in his measured, reflective way. “The Borneo he described is not the Borneo we know. He saw it from the deck of a merchant-vessel and he was not an acute observer even of what he saw. But does it matter? I don’t know why fiction should be hampered by fact. I don’t think it’s a mean achievement to have created a country, a dark, sinister, romantic, and heroic country of the soul.”

“You’re a sentimentalist, my poor Angus.” And then again to Neil: “You must read Turgenev, you must read Tolstoy, you must read Dostoyevsky.”

Neil did not in the least know what to make of Darya Munro. She skipped over the first stages of acquaintance and treated him at once like someone she had known intimately all her life. It puzzled him. It seemed so reckless. When he met anyone his own instinct was to go cautiously. He was amiable, but he did not like to step too far before he saw his way before him. He did not want to give anyone his confidence before he thought himself justified. But with Darya you could not help yourself; she forced your confidence. She poured out the feelings and thoughts that most people keep to themselves like a prodigal flinging gold pieces to a scrambling crowd. She did not talk, she did not act, like anyone he had ever known. She did not mind what she said. She would speak of the natural functions of the human animal in a way that brought the blushes coursing to his cheeks. They excited her ridicule.

“Oh, what a prig you are! What is there indecent in it? When I’m going to take a purge, why shouldn’t I say so, and when I think you want one, why shouldn’t I tell you?”

“Theoretically I dare say you’re right,” said Neil, always judicious and reasonable.

She made him tell her of his father and mother, his brothers, his life at school and at the university. She told him about herself. Her father was a general killed in the war and her mother a Princess Lutchkov. They were in Eastern Russia when the Bolsheviks seized power, and fled to Yokohama. Here they had subsisted miserably on the sale of their jewels and such objects of art as they had been able to save, and here she married a fellow-exile. She was unhappy with him and in two years divorced him. Her mother died and, penniless, she was driven to earn her living as best she could. She was employed by an American relief organization. She taught in a mission school. She worked in a hospital. She made Neil’s blood boil, and at the same time embarrassed him very much, when she spoke of the men who tried to take advantage of her defencelessness and her poverty. She spared him no details.

“Brutes,” he said.

“Oh, all men are like that,” she replied, with a shrug of her shoulders.

She told him how once she protected her virtue at the point of her revolver.

“I swore I’d kill him if he took another step, and if he had I’d have shot him like a dog.”

“Gosh!” said Neil.

It was at Yokohama that she met Angus. He was spending his leave in Japan. She was captivated by his straightforwardness, the decency which was so obvious in him, his tenderness and his consideration. He was not a business man; he was a scientist, and science is milk-brother to art. He offered her peace. He offered her security. And she was tired of Japan. Borneo was a land of mystery. They had been married for five years.

She gave Neil the Russian novelists to read. She gave him Fathers and Sons, Anna Karenina, and The Brothers Karamazov.

“Those are the three peaks of our literature. Read them. They are the greatest novels the world has ever seen.”

Like many of her countrymen she talked as though no other literature counted, and as though a few novels and stories, some indifferent poetry, and half a dozen good plays had made whatever else the world has produced negligible. Neil was fascinated and overwhelmed.

“You’re rather like Alyosha yourself, Neil,” she said, looking at him with eyes that were now so soft and tender, “an Alyosha with a Scotch dourness, suspicious and prudent, that will not let the soul in you, the spiritual beauty, come out.”

“I’m not a bit like Alyosha,” he answered self-consciously.

“You don’t know what you’re like. You don’t know anything about yourself. Why are you a naturalist? Is it for money? You could have made much more money by going into your uncle’s office in Glasgow. I feel in you something strange and unearthly. I could bow down at your feet as Father Zossima did to Dimitri.”

“Please don’t,” he said, smiling, but flushing a little too.

But the novels he read made her seem a little less strange to him. They gave her an environment and he recognized in her traits which, however unusual in the women he knew in Scotland, his mother and the daughters of his uncle in Glasgow, were common to many of the characters in Russian fiction. He no longer wondered that she should like to sit up so late, drinking innumerable cups of tea, and lie on the sofa nearly all day long reading and incessantly smoking cigarettes. She could do nothing at all for days on end without being bored. She had a curious mixture of languor and zest. She often said, with a shrug of her shoulders, that she was an Oriental, and a European only by chance. She had a feline grace that indeed suggested the Oriental. She was immensely untidy and it did not seem to affect her that cigarette-ends, old papers, and empty tins should lie about their living-room. But he thought she had something of Anna Karenina in her and he transferred to her the sympathy he felt for that pathetic creature. He understood her arrogance. It was not unnatural that she despised the women of the community, whose acquaintance little by little he made; they were commonplace; her mind was quicker than theirs, she had a wider culture, and she had above all a sort of tremulous sensitiveness that made them extraordinarily colourless. She certainly took no pains to conciliate them. Though at home she slopped about in a sarong and baju, when she and Angus went out to dinner she dressed with a splendour that was somewhat out of place. She liked to display her ample bosom and her shapely back. She painted her cheeks and made up her eyes like an actress for the footlights. Though it made Neil angry to see the amused or outraged glances that her appearance provoked, he could not in his heart but think it a pity that she should make such an object of herself. She looked grand, of course, but if you hadn’t known who she was you would have thought she wasn’t respectable. There were things about her that he could never get over. She had an enormous appetite and it fashed him that she ate more than he and Angus together. He could never quite get used to the bluntness with which she discussed sexual matters. She took it for granted that at home and in Edinburgh he had had affairs with a host of women. She pressed him for details of his adventures. His Scotch pawkiness helped him to parry her thrusts and he evaded her questions with native caution. She laughed at his reticence.

Sometimes she shocked him. He grew accustomed to the frankness with which she admired his looks, and when she told him that he was as beautiful as a young Norse god he did not turn a hair. Flattery fell off him like water from a duck’s back. But he did not like it when she ran her hand, though large, very soft, with caressing fingers, through his curly hair or, a smile on her lips, stroked his smooth face. He couldn’t bear being mussed about. One day she wanted a drink of tonic water and began pouring some out in a glass that stood on the table.

“That’s my glass,” he said quickly. I’ve just been drinking out of it.”

“Well, what of it? You haven’t got syphilis, have you?”

“I hate drinking out of other people’s glasses myself.”

She was funny about cigarettes too. Once, when he hadn’t been there very long, he had just lit one, when she passed and said:

“I want that.”

She took it out of his mouth and began to smoke it. After two or three puffs, she said she did not want any more and handed it back to him. The end she had had in her mouth was red from the rouge on her lips, and he didn’t want to go on smoking it at all. But he was afraid she would think it rude if he threw it away. It somewhat disgusted him. Often she would ask him for a cigarette and when he handed it to her, say:

“Oh, light it for me, will you?”

When he did so, and held it out to her, she opened her mouth so that he should put it in. He hadn’t been able to help wetting the end a little. He wondered she could bear to put it in her mouth after it had been in his. The whole thing seemed to him awfully familiar. He was sure Munro wouldn’t like it. She had even done this once or twice at the club. Neil had felt himself go purple. He wished she hadn’t got these rather unpleasant habits, but he supposed that they were Russian, and one couldn’t deny that she was wonderfully good company. Her conversation was very stimulating. It was like champagne (which Neil had tasted once and thought wretched stuff), “metaphorically speaking’. There was nothing she couldn’t talk about. She didn’t talk like a man; with a man you generally knew what he would say next, but with her you never did; her intuition was quite remarkable. She gave you ideas. She enlarged your mind and excited your imagination. Neil felt alive as he had never felt alive before. He seemed to walk on mountain peaks, and the horizons of the spirit were unbounded. Neil felt a certain complacency when he stopped to reflect on what an exalted plane his mind communed with hers. Such conversations made very small beer of the vaunted pleasure of sense. She was in many ways (he was of a cautious nature and seldom made a statement even to himself that he did not qualify) the most intelligent woman he had ever met. And besides, she was Angus Munro’s wife.

For, whatever Neil’s reservations were about Darya, he had none about Munro, and she would have had to be a much less remarkable woman not to profit by the enormous admiration he conceived for her husband. With him Neil let himself go. He felt for him what he had never felt for anyone before. He was so sane, so balanced, so tolerant. This was the sort of man he would himself like to be when he was older. He talked little, but when he did, with good sense. He was wise. He had a dry humour that Neil understood. It made the hearty English fun of the men at the club seem inane. He was kind and patient. He had a dignity that made it impossible to conceive anyone taking a liberty with him, but he was neither pompous nor solemn. He was honest and absolutely truthful. But Neil admired him no less as a scientist than as a man. He had imagination. He was careful and painstaking. Though his interest was in research he did the routine work of the museum conscientiously. He was just then much interested in stick-insects and intended to write a paper on their powers of parthenogenetic reproduction. An incident occurred in connexion with the experiments he was making that made a great impression on Neil. One day, a little captive gibbon escaped from its chain and ate up all the larvae and so destroyed the whole of Munro’s evidence. Neil nearly cried. Angus Munro took the gibbon in his arms and, smiling, stroked it.

“Diamond, Diamond,” he said, quoting Sir Isaac Newton, “you little know the damage you have done.”

He was also studying mimicry and instilled into Neil his absorbed interest in this controversial subject. They had interminable talks about it. Neil was astonished at the Curator’s wonderful knowledge. It was encyclopaedic, and he was abashed at his own ignorance. But it was when Munro spoke of the trips into the country to collect specimens that his enthusiasm was most contagious. That was the perfect life, a life of hardship, difficulty, often of privation and sometimes of danger, but rewarded by the thrill of finding a rare, or even a new, species, by the beauty of the scenery, and the intimate observation of nature, and above all the sense of freedom from every tie. It was for this part of the work that Neil had been chiefly engaged. Munro was occupied in research work that made it difficult for him to be away from home for several weeks at a time, and Darya had always refused to accompany him. She had an unreasoning fear of the jungle. She was terrified of wild beasts, snakes, and venomous insects. Though Munro had told her over and over again that no animal hurt you unless you molested or frightened it, she could not get over her instinctive horror. He did not like leaving her. She cared little for the local society and with him away he realized that life for her must be intolerably dull. But the Sultan was keenly interested in natural history and was anxious that the museum should be completely representative of the country’s fauna. One expedition Munro and Neil were to make together, so that Neil should learn how to go to work, and the plans for this were discussed by them for months. Neil looked forward to it as he had never looked forward to anything in his life.

Meanwhile he learned Malay and acquired a smattering of the dialects that would be useful to him on future journeys. He played tennis and football. He soon knew everyone in the community. On the football field he threw off his absorption in science and his interest in Russian fiction and gave himself up to the pleasure of the game. He was strong, quick, and active. After it was all over it was grand to have a sluice down and a long tonic with a slice of lemon and go over it all with the other fellows. It had never been intended that Neil should live permanently with the Munros. There was a roomy rest-house at Kuala Solor, but the rule was that no one should stay in it for more than a fortnight and such of the bachelors as had no official quarters clubbed together and took a house between them. When Neil arrived it so happened that there was no vacancy in any of these messes. One evening, however, when he had been about four months in the colony, two men, Waring and Jonson, when they were sitting together after a game of tennis, told him that one member of their mess was going home and if he would like to join them they would be glad to have him. They were young fellows of his own age, in the football team, and Neil liked them both. Waring was in the Customs and Jonson in the police. He jumped at the suggestion. They told him how much it would cost and fixed a day, a fortnight later, when it would be convenient for him to move in.

At dinner he told the Munros.

“It’s been awfully good of you to let me stay so long. It’s made me very uncomfortable planting myself on you like this, I’ve been quite ashamed, but now there’s no excuse for me.”

“But we like having you here,” said Darya. “You don’t need an excuse.”

“I can hardly go on staying here indefinitely.”

“Why not? Your salary’s miserable, what’s the use of wasting it on board and lodging? You’d be bored stiff with Jonson and Waring. Stupids. They haven’t an idea in their heads outside playing the gramophone and knocking balls about.”

It was true that it had been very convenient to live free of cost. He had saved the greater part of his salary. He had a thrifty soul and had never been used to spending money when it wasn’t necessary, but he was proud. He could not go on living at other people’s expense. Darya looked at him with her quiet, observant eyes.

“Angus and I have got used to you now. I think we’d miss you. If you like, you can pay us for your board. You don’t cost anything, but if it’ll make you easier I’ll find out exactly what difference you make in cookie’s book and you can pay that.”

“It must be an awful nuisance having a stranger in the house,” he answered uncertainly.

“It’ll be miserable for you there. Good heavens, the filth they eat.”

It was true also that at the Munros you ate better than anywhere else at Kuala Solor. He had dined out now and then, and even at the Resident’s you didn’t get a very good dinner. Darya liked her food and kept the cook up to the mark. He made Russian dishes which were a fair treat. That cabbage soup of Darya’s was worth walking five miles for. But Munro hadn’t said anything.

“I’d be glad if you’d stay here,” he said now. “It’s very convenient to have you on the spot. If anything comes up we can talk it over there and then. Waring and Jonson are very good fellows, but I dare say you’d find them rather limited after a bit.”

“Oh, well, then I’ll be very pleased. Heaven knows, I couldn’t want anything better than this. I was only afraid I was in the way.”

Next day it was raining cats and dogs and it was impossible to play tennis or football, but towards six Neil put on a mackintosh and went to the club. It was empty but for the Resident, who was sitting in an arm-chair reading The Fortnightly. His name was Trevelyan, and he claimed to be related to the friend of Byron. He was a tall fat man, with close-cropped white hair and the large red face of a comic actor. He was fond of amateur theatricals and specialized in cynical dukes and facetious butlers. He was a bachelor, but generally supposed to be fond of the girls, and he liked his gin pahit before dinner. He owed his position to the Sultan’s friendship. He was a slack, complacent man, a great talker, not very fond of work, who wanted everything to go smoothly and no one to give trouble. Though not considered especially competent he was popular in the community because he was easy-going and hospitable, and he certainly made life more comfortable than if he had been energetic and efficient. He nodded to Neil.

“Well, young fellow, how are bugs today?”

“Feeling the weather, sir,” said Neil gravely.

“Hi-hi.”

In a few minutes Waring, Jonson, and another man, called Bishop, came in. He was in the Civil Service. Neil did not play bridge, so Bishop went up to the Resident.

“Would you care to make a fourth, sir?” he asked him. “There’s nobody much in the club today.”

The Resident gave the others a glance.

“All right. I’ll just finish this article and join you. Cut for me and deal. I shall only be five minutes.”

Neil went up to the three men.

“Oh, I say, Waring, thanks awfully, but I can’t move over to you after all. The Munros have asked me to stay on with them for good.”

A broad smile broke on Waring’s face.

“Fancy that.”

“It’s awfully nice of them, isn’t it? They made rather a point of it. I couldn’t very well refuse.”

“What did I tell you?” said Bishop.

“I don’t blame the boy,” said Waring.

There was something in their manner that Neil did not like. They seemed to be amused. He flushed.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he cried.

“Oh, come off it,” said Bishop. “We know our Darya. You’re not the first good-looking young fellow she’s had a romp with, and you won’t be the last.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth before Neil’s clenched fist shot out like a flash. He hit Bishop on the face and he fell heavily to the floor. Jonson sprang at Neil and seized him round the middle, for he was beside himself.

“Let me go,” he shouted. “If he doesn’t withdraw that I’ll kill him.”

The Resident, startled by the commotion, looked up and rose to his feet. He walked heavily towards them.

“What’s this? What’s this? What the hell are you boys playing at?”

They were taken aback. They had forgotten him. He was their master. Jonson let go of Neil and Bishop picked himself up. The Resident, a frown on his face, spoke to Neil sharply.

“What’s the meaning of this? Did you hit Bishop?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“He made a foul suggestion reflecting on a woman’s honour,” said Neil, very haughtily, and still white with rage.

The Resident’s eyes twinkled, but he kept a grave face.

“What woman?”

“I refuse to answer,” said Neil, throwing back his head and drawing himself up to his full imposing height.

It would have been more effective if the Resident hadn’t been a good two inches taller, and very much stouter.

“Don’t be a damned young fool.”

“Darya Munro,” said Jonson.

“What did you say, Bishop?”

“I forget the exact words I used. I said she’d hopped into bed with a good many young chaps here, and I supposed she hadn’t missed the chance of doing the same with MacAdam.”

“It was a most offensive suggestion. Will you be so good as to apologize and shake hands. Both of you.”

“I’ve had a hell of a biff, sir. My eye’s going to look like the devil. I’m damned if I apologize for telling the truth.”

“You’re old enough to know that the fact that your statement is true only makes it more offensive, and as far as your eye is concerned I’m told that a raw beef-steak is very efficacious in these circumstances. Though I put my desire that you should apologize in the form of a request out of politeness, it is in point of fact an order.”

There was a moment’s silence. The Resident looked bland.

“I apologize for what I said, sir,” Bishop said sulkily.

“Now then, MacAdam.”

“I’m sorry I hit him, sir. I apologize, too.”

“Shake hands.”

The two young men solemnly did so.

“I shouldn’t like this to go any further. It wouldn’t be nice for Munro, whom I think we all like. Can I count on you all holding your tongues?”

They nodded.

“Now be off with you. You stay, MacAdam, I want to have a few words with you.”

When the two of them were left alone, the Resident sat down and lit himself a cheroot. He offered one to Neil, but he only smoked cigarettes.

“You’re a very violent young man,” said the Resident, with a smile. “I don’t like my officers to make scenes in a public place like this.”

“Mrs Munro is a great friend of mine. She’s been kindness itself to me. I won’t hear a word said against her.”

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have your job cut out for you if you stay here much longer.”

Neil was silent for a moment. He stood, tall and slim, before the Resident, and his grave young face was guileless. He flung back his head defiantly. His emotion made him speak in broader Scots even than usual.

“I’ve lived with the Munros for four months, and I give you my word of honour that so far as I am concerned there is not an iota of truth in what that beast said. Mrs Munro has never treated me with anything that you could call undue familiarity. She’s never by word or deed given me the smallest hint that she had an improper idea in her head. She’s been like a mother to me or an elder sister.”

The Resident watched him with ironical eyes.

“I’m very glad to hear it. That’s the best thing I’ve heard about her for a long time.”

“You believe me, sir, don’t you?”

“Of course. Perhaps you’ve reformed her.” He called out, “Boy. Bring me a gin pahit.” And then to Neil. “That’ll do. You can go now if you want to. But no more fighting, mind you, or you’ll get the order of the boot.”

When Neil walked back to the Munros’ bungalow the rain had stopped and the velvet sky was bright with stars. In the garden the fire-flies were flitting here and there. From the earth rose a scented warmth and you felt that if you stopped you would hear the growth of that luxuriant vegetation. A white flower of the night gave forth an overwhelming perfume. In the veranda Munro was typing some notes, and Darya, lying at full length on a long chair, was reading. The lamp behind her lit her smoky hair so that it shone like an aureole. She looked up at Neil and, putting down her book, smiled. Her smile was very friendly.

“Where have you been, Neil?”

“At the club.”

“Anybody there?”

The scene was so cosy and domestic, Darya’s manner so peaceful and quietly assured, that it was impossible not to be touched. The two of them there, each occupied with his own concerns, seemed so united, their intimacy so natural, that no one could have conceived that they were not perfectly happy in one another. Neil did not believe a single word of what Bishop had said and the

Resident had hinted. It was incredible. After all, he knew that what they had suspected of him was untrue, so what reason was there to think that the rest was any truer? They had dirty minds, all those people; because they were a lot of swine they thought everyone else as bad as they were. His knuckle hurt him a little. He was glad he had hit Bishop. He wished he knew who had started that filthy story. He’d wring his neck.

But now Munro fixed a date for the expedition that they had so much discussed, and in his careful way began to make preparations so that at the last moment nothing should be forgotten. The plan was to go as far up the river as possible and then make their way through the jungle and hunt for specimens on the little-known Mount Hitam. They expected to be away two months. As the day on which they were to start grew nearer Munro’s spirits rose, and though he did not say very much, though he remained quiet and self-controlled, you could tell by the light in his eyes and the jauntiness of his step how much he looked forward to it. One morning, at the museum, he was almost sprightly.

“I’ve got some good news for you,” he said suddenly to Neil, after they had been looking at some experiments they were making. “Darya’s coming with us.”

“Is she? That’s grand.”

Neil was delighted. That made it perfect.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever been able to induce her to accompany me. I told her she’d enjoy it, but she would never listen to me. Queer cattle, women, I’d given it up and never thought of asking her to come this time, and suddenly, last night, out of a blue sky she said she’d like to.”

“I’m awfully glad,” said Neil.

“I didn’t much like the idea of leaving her by herself so long; now we can stay just as long as we want to.”

They started early one morning in four prahus, manned by Malays, and besides themselves the party consisted of their servants and four Dyak hunters. The three of them lay on cushions side by side, under an awning; in the other boats were the Chinese servants and the Dyaks. They carried bags of rice for the whole party, provisions for themselves, clothes, books, and all that was necessary for their work. It was heavenly to leave civilization behind them and they were all excited. They talked. They smoked. They read. The motion of the river was exquisitely soothing. They lunched on a grassy bank. Dusk fell and they moored for the night. They slept at a long house and their Dyak hosts celebrated their visit with arrak, eloquence, and a fantastic dance. Next day the river, narrowing, gave them more definitely the feeling that they were adventuring into the unknown, and the exotic vegetation that crowded the banks to the water’s edge, like an excited mob pushed from behind by a multitude, caused Neil a breathless ravishment. O wonder and delight! On the third day, because the water was shallower and the stream more rapid, they changed into lighter boats, and soon it grew so strong that the boatmen could paddle no longer, and they poled against the current with powerful and magnificent gestures. Now and then they came to rapids and had to disembark, unload, and haul the boats through a rock-strewn passage. After five days they reached a point beyond which they could go no further. There was a government bungalow there, and they settled in for a couple of nights while Munro made arrangements for their excursion into the interior. He wanted bearers for their baggage, and men to build a house for them when they reached Mount Hitam. It was necessary for Munro to see the headman of a village in the vicinity, and thinking it would save time if he went himself rather than let the headman come to him, the day after they arrived he set out at dawn with a guide and a couple of Dyaks. He expected to be back in a few hours. When he had seen him off Neil thought he would have a bathe. There was a pool a little way from the bungalow, and the water was so clear that you saw every grain of the sandy bottom. The river was so narrow there that the trees over-arched it. It was a lovely spot. It reminded Neil of the pools in Scotch streams he had bathed in as a boy, and yet it was strangely different. It had an air of romance, a feeling of virgin nature, that filled him with sensations that he found hard to analyse. He tried, of course, but older heads than his have found it difficult to anatomize happiness. A kingfisher was sitting on an overhanging branch and its vivid blue was reflected as bluely in the crystal stream. It flew away with a flashing glitter of jewelled wings when Neil, slipping off his sarong and baju, scrambled down into the water. It was fresh without being cold. He splashed and tumbled about. He enjoyed the movement of his strong limbs. He floated and looked at the blue sky peeping through the leaves and the sun that here and there gilded the water. Suddenly he heard a voice.

“How white your body is, Neil.”

With a gasp he let himself sink and turning round saw Darya standing on the bank.

“I say, I haven’t got any clothes on.”

“So I saw. It’s much nicer bathing without. Wait a minute, I’ll come in, it looks lovely.”

She also was wearing a sarong and a baju. He turned away his head quickly, for he saw that she was taking them off. He heard her splash into the water. He gave two or three strokes in order that she should have room to swim about at a good distance from him, but she swam up to him.

“Isn’t the feel of the water on one’s body lovely?” she said.

She laughed and opening her hand splashed water in his face. He was so embarrassed he did not know which way to look. In that limpid water it was impossible not to see that she was stark naked. It was not so bad now, but he could not help thinking how difficult it would be to get out. She seemed to be having a grand time.

“I don’t care if I do get my hair wet,” she said.

She turned over on her back and with strong strokes swam round the pool. When she wanted to get out, he thought, the best thing would be if he turned his back and when she was dressed she could go and he would get out later. She seemed quite unconscious of the awkwardness of the situation. He was vexed with her. It really was rather tactless to behave like that. She kept on talking to him just as if they were on dry land and properly dressed. She even called his attention to herself.

“Does my hair look awful? It’s so fine it gets like rat tails when it’s wet. Hold me under the shoulders a moment while I try to screw it up.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” he said. “You’d better leave it now.”

“I’m getting frightfully hungry,” she said presently. “What about breakfast?”

“If you’ll get out first and put on your things, I’ll follow you in a minute.”

“All right.”

She swam the two strokes needed to bring her to the side, and he modestly looked away so that he should not see her get out nude from the water.

“I can’t get up,” she cried.

“You’ll have to help me.”

It had been easy enough to get in, but the bank overhung the water and one had to lift oneself up by the branch of a tree.

“I can’t. I haven’t got a stitch of clothing on.”

“I know that. Don’t be so Scotch. Get up on the bank and give me a hand.”

There was no help for it. Neil swung himself up and pulled her after him. She had left her sarong beside his. She took it up unconcernedly and began to dry herself with it. There was nothing for him but do to the same, but for decency’s sake he turned his back on her.

“You really have a most lovely skin,” she said. “It’s as smooth and white as a woman’s. It’s funny on such a manly virile figure. And you haven’t got a hair on your chest.”

Neil wrapped the sarong round him and slipped his arms into the baju.

“Are you ready?”

She had porridge for breakfast, and eggs and bacon, cold meat, and marmalade. Neil was a trifle sulky. She was really almost too Russian. It was stupid of her to behave like that; of course there was no harm in it, but it was just the sort of thing that made people think the things they did about her. The worst of it was that you couldn’t give her a hint. She’d only laugh at you. But the fact was that if any of those men at Kuala Solor had seen them bathing like that together, stark naked, nothing would have persuaded them that something improper hadn’t happened. In his judicious way Neil admitted to himself that you could hardly blame them. It was too bad of her. She had no right to put a fellow in such a position. He had felt such a fool. And say what you liked, it was indecent.

Next morning, having seen their carriers on the way, a long procession in single file, each man carrying his load in a creel on his back, with their servants, guides, and hunters, they started to walk. The path ran over the foothills of the mountain, through scrub and tall grass, and now and then they came to narrow streams which they crossed by rickety bridges of bamboo. The sun beat on them fiercely. In the afternoon they reached the shade of a bamboo forest, grateful after the glare, and the bamboos in their slender elegance rose to incredible heights, and the green light was like the light under the sea. At last they reached the primeval forest, huge trees swathed in luxuriant creepers, an inextricable tangle, and awe descended upon them. They cut their way through the undergrowth. They walked in twilight and only now and then caught through the dense foliage above them a glimpse of sunshine. They saw neither man nor beast, for the denizens of the jungle are shy and at the first sound of footsteps vanish from sight. They heard birds up high in the tall trees, but saw none save the twittering sunbirds that flew in the underwoods and delicately coquetted with the wild flowers. They halted for the night. The carriers made a floor of branches and on this spread waterproof sheets. The Chinese cook made them their dinner and then they turned in.

It was the first night Neil had ever spent in the jungle and he could not sleep. The darkness was profound. The noise was deafening of innumerable insects, but like the roar of traffic in a great city it was so constant that in a little while it was like an impenetrable silence, and when on a sudden he heard the shriek of a monkey seized by a snake or the scream of a night-bird he nearly jumped out of his skin. He had a mysterious sensation that all around creatures were watching them. Over there, beyond the camp-fires, savage warfare was waged and they three on their bed of branches were defenceless and alone in face of the horror of nature. By his side Munro was breathing quietly in his deep sleep.

“Are you awake, Neil?” Darya whispered.

“Yes. Is anything the matter?”

“I’m terrified.”

“It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“The silence is so awful. I wish I hadn’t come.”

She lit a cigarette.

Neil, having at last dozed off, was awakened by the hammering of a woodpecker, and its complacent laugh as it flew from one tree to another seemed to mock the sluggards. A hurried breakfast, and the caravan started. The gibbons swung from branch to branch, gathering in the dawn dew from the leaves, and their strange cry was like the call of a bird. The light had driven away Darya’s fears, and notwithstanding a sleepless night she was alert and gay. They continued to climb. In the afternoon they reached the spot that the guides had told them would be a good camping place, and here Munro decided to build a house. The men set to work. With their long knives they cut palm leaves and saplings and soon had erected a two-roomed hut raised on piles from the ground. It was neat and fresh and green. It smelt good.

The Munros, he from old habit, she because she had for years wandered about the world and had a catlike knack of making herself comfortable wherever she went, were at home anywhere. In a day they had arranged everything and settled down. Their routine was invariable. Every morning Neil and Munro started out separately, collecting. The afternoon was devoted to pinning insects in boxes, placing butterflies between sheets of paper and skinning birds. When dusk came they caught moths. Darya busied herself with the hut and the servants, sewed and read and smoked innumerable cigarettes. The days passed very pleasantly, monotonous but eventful. Neil was enraptured. He explored the mountain in all directions. One day, to his pride, he found a new species of stick-insect. Munro named it Cuniculina MacAdami. This was fame. Neil (at twenty-two) realized that he had not lived in vain. But another day he only just escaped being bitten by a viper. Owing to its green colour he had not seen it and was only saved from lurching against it by the Dyak hunter who was with him. They killed it and brought it back to camp. Darya shuddered at the sight of it. She had a terror of the wild creatures of the jungle and was almost hysterical. She would never go more than a few yards from the camp for fear of being lost.

“Has Angus ever told you how he was lost?” she asked Neil one evening when they were sitting quietly together after dinner.

“It wasn’t a very pleasant experience,” he smiled.

“Tell him, Angus.”

He hesitated a little. It was not a thing he liked to recall.

“It was some years ago, I’d gone out with my butterfly net and I’d been very lucky. I’d got several rare specimens that I’d been looking for a long time. After a while I thought I was getting hungry so I turned back. I walked for some time and it struck me I’d come a good deal farther than I knew. Suddenly I caught sight of an empty match-box. I’d thrown it away when I started to come back; I’d been walking in a circle and was exactly where I was an hour before. I was not pleased. But I had a look round and set off again. It was fearfully hot and I was simply dripping with sweat. I knew more or less the direction the camp was in and I looked about for traces of my passage to see if I had come that way. I thought I found one or two and went on hopefully. I was frightfully thirsty. I walked on and on, picking my way over snags and trailing plants, and suddenly I knew I was lost. I couldn’t have gone so far in the right direction without hitting the camp. I can tell you I was startled. I knew I must keep my head, so I sat down and thought the situation over. I was tortured by thirst. It was long past midday and in three or four hours it would be dark. I didn’t like the idea of spending a night in the jungle at all. The only thing I could think of was to try and find a stream; if I followed its course, it would eventually bring me to a larger stream and sooner or later to the river. But of course it might take a couple of days. I cursed myself for being such a fool, but there was nothing better to do and I began walking. At all events if I found a stream I should be able to get a drink. I couldn’t find a trickle of water anywhere, not the smallest brook that might lead to something like a stream. I began to be alarmed. I saw myself wandering on till at last I fell exhausted. I knew there was a lot of game in the forest and if I came upon a rhino I was done for. The maddening thing was I knew I couldn’t be more than ten miles from my camp. I forced myself to keep my head. The day was waning and in the depths of the jungle it was growing dark already. If I’d brought a gun I could have fired it. In the camp they must have realized I was lost and would be looking for me. The undergrowth was so thick that I couldn’t see six feet into it and presently, I don’t know if it was nerves or not, I had the sensation that some animal was walking stealthily beside me. I stopped and it stopped too. I went on and it went on. I couldn’t see it. I could see no movement in the undergrowth. I didn’t even hear the breaking of a twig or the brushing of a body through leaves, but I knew how silently those beasts could move, and I was positive something was stalking me. My heart beat so violently against my ribs that I thought it would break. I was scared out of my wits. It was only by the exercise of all the self-control I had that I prevented myself from breaking into a run. I knew if I did that I was lost. I should be tripped up before I had gone twenty yards by a tangle root and when I was down it would spring on me. And if I started to run God knew where I should get to. And I had to husband my strength. I felt very like crying. And that intolerable thirst. I’ve never been so frightened in my life. Believe me, if I’d had a revolver I think I’d have blown my brains out. It was so awful I just wanted to finish with it. I was so exhausted I could hardly stagger. If I had an enemy who’d done me a deadly injury I wouldn’t wish him the agony I endured then. Suddenly I heard two shots. My heart stood still. They were looking for me. Then I did lose my head. I ran in the direction of the sound, screaming at the top of my voice. I fell, I picked myself up again. I ran on, I shouted till I thought my lungs would burst, there was another shot, nearer, I shouted again, I heard answering shouts; there was a scramble of men in the undergrowth. In a minute I was surrounded by Dyak hunters. They wrung and kissed my hands. They laughed and cried. I very nearly cried too. I was down and out, but they gave me a drink. We were only three miles from the camp. It was pitch dark when we got back. By God, it was a near thing.”

A convulsive shudder passed through Darya.

“Believe me, I don’t want to be lost in the jungle again.”

“What would have happened if you hadn’t been found?”

“I can tell you. I should have gone mad. If I hadn’t been stung by a snake or attacked by a rhino I should have gone on blindly till I fell exhausted. I should have starved to death. I should have died of thirst. Wild beasts would have eaten my body and ants cleaned my bones.”

Silence fell upon them.

Then it happened, when they had spent nearly a month on Mount Hitam, that Neil, notwithstanding the quinine Munro had made him take regularly, was stricken with fever. It was not a bad attack, but he felt very sorry for himself

and was obliged to stay in bed. Darya nursed him. He was ashamed to give her so much trouble, but she would not listen to his protests. She was certainly very capable. He resigned himself to letting her do things for him that one of the Chinese boys could have done just as well. He was touched. She waited on him hand and foot. But when the fever was at its height and she sponged him all over with cold water, though the comfort was indescribable, he was excessively embarrassed. She insisted on washing him night and morning.

“I wasn’t in the British hospital at Yokohama for six months without learning at least the routine of nursing,” she said, smiling.

She kissed him on the lips each time after she had finished. It was friendly and sweet of her. He rather liked it, but attached no importance to it; he even went so far, a rare thing for him, as to be facetious on the subject.

“Did you always kiss your patients at the hospital?” he asked her.

“Don’t you like me to kiss you?” she smiled.

“It doesn’t do me any harm.”

“It may even hasten your recovery,” she mocked.

One night he dreamt of her. He awoke with a start. He was sweating profusely. The relief was wonderful, and he knew that his temperature had fallen; he was well. He did not care. For what he had dreamt filled him with shame. He was horrified. That he should have such thoughts, even in his sleep, made him feel awful. He must be a monster of depravity. Day was breaking, and he heard Munro getting up in the room next door that he occupied with Darya. She slept late, and he took care not to disturb her. When he passed through Neil’s room, Neil in a low voice called him.

“Hullo, are you awake?”

“Yes, I’ve had the crisis. I’m all right now.”

“Good. You’d better stay in bed today. Tomorrow you’ll be as fit as a fiddle.”

“Send Ah Tan to me when you’ve had your breakfast, will you?”

“Right-ho.”

He heard Munro start out. The Chinese boy came and asked him what he wanted. An hour later Darya awoke. She came in to bid him good morning. He could hardly look at her.

“I’ll just have my breakfast and then I’ll come in and wash you,” she said.

“I’m washed. I got Ah Tan to do it.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to spare you the trouble.”

“It isn’t a trouble. I like doing it.”

She came over to the bed and bent down to kiss him, but he turned away his head.

“Oh, don’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s silly.”

She looked at him for a moment, surprised, and then with a slight shrug of the shoulders left him. A little later she came back to see if there was anything he wanted. He pretended to be asleep. She very gently stroked his cheek.

“For God’s sake don’t do that,” he cried.

“I thought you were sleeping. What’s the matter with you today?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you being horrid to me? Have I done anything to offend you?”

“No.”

“Tell me what it is.”

She sat down on the bed and took his hand. He turned his face to the wall. He was so ashamed he could hardly speak.

“You seem to forget I’m a man. You treat me as if I was a boy of twelve.”

“Oh?”

He was blushing furiously. He was angry with himself and vexed with her. She really should be more tactful. He plucked nervously at the sheet.

“I know it means nothing to you and it ought not to mean anything to me. It doesn’t when I’m well and up and about. One can’t help one’s dreams, but they are an indication of what is going on in the subconscious.”

“Have you been dreaming about me? Well, I don’t think there’s any harm in that.”

He turned his head and looked at her. Her eyes were gleaming, but his were sombre with remorse.

“You don’t know men,” he said.

She gave a little burble of laughter. She bent down and threw her arms round his neck. She had nothing on but her sarong and baju.

“You darling,” she cried. “Tell me, what did you dream?”

He was startled out of his wits. He pushed her violently aside.

“What are you doing? You’re crazy.”

He jumped half out of bed.

“Don’t you know that I’m madly in love with you?” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

He sat down on the side of the bed. He was frankly bewildered. She chuckled.

“Why do you suppose I came up to this horrible place? To be with you, ducky. Don’t you know I’m scared stiff of the jungle? Even in here I’m frightened there’ll be snakes or scorpions or something. I adore you.”

“You have no right to speak to me like that,” he said sternly.

“Oh, don’t be so prim,” she smiled.

“Let’s get out of here.”

He walked out on to the veranda and she followed him. He threw himself into a chair. She knelt by his side and tried to take his hands, but he withdrew them.

“I think you must be mad. I hope to God you don’t mean what you say.”

“I do. Every word of it,” she smiled.

It exasperated him that she seemed unconscious of the frightfulness of her confession.

“Have you forgotten your husband?”

“Oh, what does he matter?”

“Darya.”

“I can’t be bothered about Angus now.”

“I’m afraid you’re a very wicked woman,” he said slowly, a frown darkening his smooth brow.

She giggled.

“Because I’ve fallen in love with you? Darling, you shouldn’t be so absurdly good-looking.”

“For God’s sake don’t laugh.”

“I can’t help it; you’re comic-but still adorable. I love your white skin and your shining curly hair. I love you because you’re so prim and Scotch and humourless. I love your strength. I love your youth.”

Her eyes glowed and her breath came quickly. She stooped and kissed his naked feet. He drew them away quickly, with a cry of protest, and in the agitation of his gesture nearly overthrew the rickety chair.

“Woman, you’re insane. Have you no shame?”

“No.”

“What do you want of me?” he asked fiercely.

“Love.”

“What sort of man do you take me for?”

“A man like any other,” she replied calmly.

“Do you think after all that Angus Munro has done for me I could be such a damned beast as to play about with his wife? I admire him more than any man I’ve ever known. He’s grand. He’s worth a dozen of me and you put together. I’d sooner kill myself than betray him. I don’t know how you can think me capable of such a dastardly act.”

“Oh, my dear, don’t talk such bilge. What harm is it going to do him? You mustn’t take that sort of thing so tragically. After all, life is very short; we’re fools if we don’t take what pleasure we can out of it.”

“You can’t make wrong right by talking about it.”

“I don’t know about that. I think that’s a very controvertible statement.”

He looked at her with amazement. She was sitting at his feet, cool to all appearance and collected, and she seemed to be enjoying the situation. She seemed quite unconscious of its seriousness.

“Do you know that I knocked a fellow down at the club because he made an insulting remark about you?”

“Who?”

“Bishop.”

“Dirty dog. What did he say?”

“He said you’d had affairs with men.”

“I don’t know why people won’t mind their own business. Anyhow, who cares what they say? I love you. I’ve never loved anyone like you. I’m absolutely sick with love for you.”

“Be quiet. Be quiet.”

“Listen, tonight when Angus is asleep I’ll slip into your room. He sleeps like a rock. There’s no risk.”

“You mustn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“No, no, no.”

He was frightened out of his wits. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and went into the house.

Munro came back at noon, and in the afternoon they busied themselves as usual. Darya, as she sometimes did, worked with them. She was in high spirits. She was so gay that Munro suggested that she was beginning to enjoy the life.

“It’s not so bad,” she admitted. “I’m feeling happy today.”

She teased Neil. She seemed not to notice that he was silent and kept his eyes averted from her.

“Neil’s very quiet,” said Munro. “I suppose you’re feeling a bit weak still.”

“No. I just don’t feel very talkative.”

He was harassed. He was convinced that Darya was capable of anything. He remembered the hysterical frenzy of Nastasya Filipovna in The Idiot, and felt that she too could behave with that unfortunate lack of balance. He had seen her more than once fly into a temper with one of the Chinese servants and he knew how completely she could lose her self-control. Resistance only exasperated her. If she did not immediately get what she wanted she would go almost insane with rage. Fortunately she lost interest in a thing with the same suddenness with which she hankered for it, and if you could distract her attention for a minute she forgot all about it. It was in such situations that Neil had most admired Munro’s tact. He had often been slyly amused to see with what a pawky and yet tender cunning he appeased her feminine tantrums. It was on Munro’s account that Neil’s indignation was so great. Munro was a saint, and from what a state of humiliation and penury and random shifts had he not taken her to make her his wife! She owed everything to him. His name protected her. She had respectability. The commonest gratitude should have made it impossible for her to harbour such thoughts as she had that morning expressed. It was all very well for men to make advances, that was what men did, but for women to do so was disgusting. His modesty was outraged. The passion he had seen in her face, and the indelicacy of her gestures, scandalized him.

He wondered whether she would really carry out her threat to come to his room. He didn’t think she would dare. But when night came and they all went to bed, he was so terrified that he could not sleep. He lay there listening anxiously. The silence was broken only by the repeated and monotonous cry of an owl. Through the thin wall of woven palm leaves he heard Munro’s steady breathing. Suddenly he was conscious that someone was stealthily creeping into his room. He had already made up his mind what to do.

“Is that you, Mr Munro?” he called in a loud voice.

Darya stopped suddenly. Munro awoke.

“There’s someone in my room. I thought it was you.”

“It’s all right,” said Darya. “It’s only me, I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d go and smoke a cigarette on the veranda.”

“Oh, is that all?” said Munro. “Don’t catch cold.”

She walked through Neil’s room and out. He saw her light a cigarette. Presently she went back and he heard her get into bed.

He did not see her next morning, for he started out collecting before she was up, and he took care not to get in till he was pretty sure Munro would be back. He avoided being alone with her till it was dark and Munro went down for a few minutes to arrange the moth-traps.

“Why did you wake Angus last night?” she said in a low angry whisper.

He shrugged his shoulders and going on with his work did not answer.

“Were you frightened?”

“I have a certain sense of decency.”

“Oh, don’t be such a prig.”

“I’d rather be a prig than a dirty swine.”

“I hate you.”

“Then leave me alone.”

She did not answer, but with her open hand smartly slapped his face. He flushed, but did not speak. Munro returned and they pretended to be intent on whatever they were doing.

For the next few days Darya, except at meal-times and in the evenings, never spoke to Neil. Without prearrangement they exerted themselves to conceal from Munro that their relations were strained. But the effort with which Darya roused herself from a brooding silence would have been obvious to anyone more suspicious than Angus, and sometimes she could not help herself from being a trifle sharp with Neil. She chaffed him, but in her chaff was a sting. She knew how to wound and caught him on the raw, but he took care not to let her see it. He had an inkling that the good-humour he affected infuriated her.

Then one day when Neil came back from collecting, though he had delayed till the last possible minute before tiffin, he was surprised to find that Munro had not yet returned. Darya was lying on a mattress on the veranda, sipping a gin pahit and smoking. She did not speak to him when he passed through to wash. In a minute the Chinese boy came into his room and told him that tiffin was ready. He walked out.

“Where’s Mr Munro?” he asked.

“He’s not coming,” said Darya. “He sent a message to say that the place he’s at is so good he won’t come down till night.”

Munro had set out that morning for the summit of the mountain. The lower levels had yielded poor results in the way of mammals, and Munro’s idea was, if he could find a good place higher up, with a supply of water, to transfer the camp. Neil and Darya ate their meal in silence. After they had finished he went into the house and came out again with his topee and his collecting gear. It was unusual for him to go out in the afternoon.

“Where are you going?” she asked abruptly.

“Out.”

“Why?”

“I don’t feel tired. I’ve got nothing much else to do this afternoon.”

Suddenly she burst into tears.

“How can you be so unkind to me?” she sobbed. “Oh, it is cruel to treat me like this.”

He looked down at her from his great height, his handsome, somewhat stolid face bearing a harassed look. “What have I done?”

“You’ve been beastly to me. Bad as I am I haven’t deserved to suffer like this. I’ve done everything in the world for you. Tell me one single little thing I could do that I haven’t done gladly. I’m so terribly unhappy.”

He moved on his feet uneasily. It was horrible to hear her say that. He loathed and feared her, but he had still the respect for her that he had always felt, not only because she was a woman, but because she was Angus Munro’s wife. She wept uncontrollably. Fortunately the Dyak hunters had gone that morning with Munro. There was no one about the camp but the three Chinese servants and they, after tiffin, were asleep in their own quarters fifty yards away. They were alone.

“I don’t want to make you unhappy. It’s all so silly. It’s absurd of a woman like you to fall in love with a fellow like me. It makes me look such a fool. Haven’t you got any self-control?”

“Oh, God. Self-control!”

“I mean, if you really cared for me you couldn’t want me to be such a cad. Doesn’t it mean anything to you that your husband trusts us implicitly? The mere fact of his leaving us alone like this puts us on our honour. He’s a man who would never hurt a fly. I should never respect myself again if I betrayed his confidence.”

She looked up suddenly.

“What makes you think he would never hurt a fly? Why, all those bottles and cases are full of the harmless animals he’s killed.”

“In the interests of science. That’s quite another thing.”

“Oh, you fool, you fool.”

“Well, if I am a fool I can’t help it. Why do you bother about me?”

“Do you think I wanted to fall in love with you?”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Ashamed? How stupid! My God, what have I done that I should eat my heart out for such a pretentious ass?”

“You talk about what you’ve done for me. What has Munro done for you?”

“Munro bores me to death. I’m sick of him. Sick to death of him.”

“Then I’m not the first?”

Ever since her amazing avowal he had been tortured by the suspicion that what those men at Kuala Solor had said of her was true. He had refused to believe a word of it, and even now he could not bring himself to think that she could be such a monster of depravity. It was frightful to think that Angus Munro, so trusting and tender, should have lived in a fool’s paradise. She could not be as bad as that. But she misunderstood him. She smiled through her tears.

“Of course not. How can you be so silly? Oh, darling, don’t be so desperately serious. I love you.”

Then it was true. He had sought to persuade himself that what she felt for him was exceptional, a madness that together they could contend with and vanquish. But she was simply promiscuous.

“Aren’t you afraid Munro will find out?”

She was not crying any more. She adored talking about herself, and she had a feeling that she was inveigling Neil into a new interest in her.

“I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t know, if not with his mind, then with his heart. He’s got the intuition of a woman and a woman’s sensitiveness. Sometimes I’ve been certain he suspected and in his anguish I’ve sensed a strange, spiritual exaltation. I’ve wondered if in his pain he didn’t find an infinitely subtle pleasure. There are souls, you know, that feel a voluptuous joy in laceration.”

“How horrible!” Neil had no patience with these conceits. “The only excuse for you is that you’re insane.”

She was now much more sure of herself. She gave him a bold look.

“Don’t you think I’m attractive? A good many men have. You must have had dozens of women in Scotland who weren’t so well made as I am.”

She looked down at her shapely, sensual figure with calm pride.

“I’ve never had a woman,” he said gravely.

“Why not?”

She was so surprised that she sprang to her feet. He shrugged his shoulders. He could not bring himself to tell her how disgusting the idea of such a thing was to him, and how vile he had thought the haphazard amours of his fellow-students at Edinburgh. He took a mystical joy in his purity. Love was sacred. The sexual act horrified him. Its excuse was the procreation of children and its sanctification marriage. But Darya, her whole body rigid, stared at him, panting; and suddenly, with a sobbing cry in which there was exultation and at the same time wild desire, she flung herself on her knees and seizing his hand passionately kissed it.

“Alyosha,” she gasped. “Alyosha.”

And then, crying and laughing, she crumpled up in a heap at his feet. Strange, hardly human sounds issued from her throat and convulsive tremors passed through her body so that you would have thought she was receiving one electric shock after another. Neil did not know if it was an attack of hysteria or an epileptic fit.

“Stop it,” he cried. “Stop it.”

He took her up in his strong arms and laid her in the chair. But when he tried to leave her she would not let him. She flung her arms round his neck and held him. She covered his face with kisses. He struggled. He turned his face away. He put his hand between her face and his to protect himself. Suddenly she dug her teeth into it. The pain was so great that, without thinking, he gave her a great swinging blow.

“You devil,” he cried.

His violent gesture had forced her to release him. He held his hand and looked at it. She had caught him by the fleshy part on the side, and it was bleeding. Her eyes blazed. She was feeling alert and active.

“I’ve had enough of this. I’m going out,” he said.

She sprang to her feet.

“I’ll come with you.”

He put on his topee and, snatching up his collecting gear without a word, turned on his heel. With one stride he leaped down the three steps that led from the floor of the house to the ground. She followed him.

“I’m going into the jungle,” he said.

“I don’t care.”

In the ravening desire that possessed her she forgot her morbid fear of the jungle. She recked nothing of snakes and wild beasts. She did not mind the branches that hit her face or the creepers that entangled her feet. For a month Neil had explored all that part of the forest and he knew every yard of it. He told himself grimly that he’d teach her to come with him. He forced his way through the undergrowth with rapid strides; she followed him, stumbling but determined; he crashed on, blind with rage, and she crashed after him. She talked; he did not listen to what she said. She besought him to have pity on her. She bemoaned her fate. She made herself humble. She wept and wrung her hands. She tried to cajole him. The words poured from her lips in an unceasing stream. She was like a mad woman. At last in a little clearing he stopped suddenly and turning round faced her.

“This is impossible,” he cried. “I’m fed up. When Angus comes back I must tell him I’ve got to go. I shall go back to Kuala Solor tomorrow morning and go home.”

“He won’t let you go, he wants you. He finds you invaluable.”

“I don’t care. I’ll fake up something.”

“What?”

He mistook her.

“Oh, you needn’t be frightened, I shan’t tell him the truth. You can break his heart if you want to; I’m not going to.”

“You worship him, don’t you? That dull, phlegmatic man.”

“He’s worth a hundred of you.”

“It would be rather funny if I told him you’d gone because I wouldn’t yield to your advances.”

He gave a slight start and looked at her to see if she was serious.

“Don’t be such a fool. You don’t think he’d believe that, do you? He knows it would never occur to me.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

She had spoken carelessly, with no particular intention other than to continue the argument, but she saw that he was frightened and some instinct of cruelty made her press the advantage.

“Do you expect mercy from me? You’ve humiliated me beyond endurance. You’ve treated me like dirt. I swear that if you make any suggestion of going I shall go straight to Angus and say that you took advantage of his absence to try and assault me.”

“I can deny it. After all it’s only your word against mine.”

“Yes, but my word’ll count. I can prove what I say.”

“What do you mean?”

“I bruise easily. I can show him the bruise where you struck me. And look at your hand.” He turned and gave it a sudden glance. “How did those teeth marks get there?”

He stared at her stupidly. He had gone quite pale. How could he explain that bruise and that scar? If he was forced to in self-defence he could tell the truth, but was it likely that Angus would believe it? He worshipped Darya. He would take her word against anyone’s. What monstrous ingratitude it would seem for all Munro’s kindness and what treachery in return for so much confidence! He would think him a filthy skunk and from his standpoint with justice. That was what shattered him, the thought that Munro, for whom he would willingly have laid down his life, should think ill of him. He was so unhappy that tears, unmanly tears that he hated, came to his eyes. Darya saw that he was broken. She exulted. She was paying him back for the misery he had made her suffer. She held him now. He was in her power. She savoured her triumph, and in the midst of her anguish laughed in her heart because he was such a fool. At that moment she did not know whether she loved or despised him.

“Now will you be good?” she said.

He gave a sob and blindly, with a sudden instinct of escape from that abominable woman, took to his heels and ran as hard as he could. He plunged through the jungle, like a wounded animal, not looking where he was going, till he was out of breath. Then, panting, he stopped. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the sweat that was pouring into his eyes and blinding him. He was exhausted and he sat down to rest.

“I must take care I don’t get lost,” he said to himself.

That was the least of his troubles, but all the same he was glad that he had a pocket compass, and he knew in which direction he must go. He heaved a deep sigh and rose wearily to his feet. He started walking. He watched his way and with another part of his mind miserably asked himself what he should do. He was convinced that Darya would do what she had threatened. They were to be another three weeks in that accursed place. He dared not go; he dared not stay. His mind was in a whirl. The only thing was to get back to camp and think it out quietly. In about a quarter of an hour he came to a spot that he recognized. In an hour he was back. He flung himself miserably into a chair. And it was Angus who filled his thoughts. His heart bled for him. Neil saw now all sorts of things that before had been dark to him. They were revealed to him in a flash of bitter insight. He knew why the women at Kuala Solor were so hostile to Darya and why they looked at Angus so strangely. They treated him with a sort of affectionate levity. Neil thought it was because Angus was a man of science and so in their foolish eyes somewhat absurd. He knew now it was because they were sorry for him and at the same time found him ridiculous. Darya had made him the laughing-stock of the community. If ever there was a man who hadn’t deserved ill usage at a woman’s hands it was he. Suddenly Neil gasped and began to tremble all over. It had suddenly occurred to him that Darya did not know her way through the jungle; in his anguish he had hardly been conscious of where they went. Supposing she could not find her way home?

She would be terrified. He remembered the ghastly story Angus had told them of being lost in the forest. His first instinct was to go back and find her, and he sprang to his feet. Then a fierce anger seized him. No, let her shift for herself. She had gone of her own free will. Let her find her own way back. She was an abominable woman and deserved all that might come to her. Neil threw back his head defiantly, a frown of indignation on his smooth young brow, and clenched his hands. Courage. He made up his mind. It would be better for Angus if she never returned. He sat down and began trying to mount a skin of a Mountain Trogon. But the Trogon has a skin like wet tissue-paper and his hands trembled. He tried to apply his mind to the work he was doing, but his thoughts fluttered desperately, like moths in a trap, and he could not control them. What was happening over there in the jungle? What had she done when he suddenly bolted? Every now and then, against his will, he looked up. At any moment she might appear in the clearing and walk calmly up to the house. He was not to blame. It was the hand of God. He shuddered. Storm clouds were gathering in the sky and night fell quickly.

Just after dusk Munro arrived.

“Just in time,” he said. “There’s going to be a hell of a storm.”

He was in great spirits. He had come upon a fine plateau, with lots of water, from which there was a magnificent view to the sea. He had found two or three rare butterflies and a flying squirrel. He was full of plans to move the camp to his new place. All about it he had seen abundant evidence of animal life. Presently he went into the house to take off his heavy walking boots. He came out at once.

“Where’s Darya?”

Neil stiffened himself to behave with naturalness.

“Isn’t she in her room?”

“No. Perhaps she’s gone down to the servants’ quarters for something.”

He walked down the steps and strolled a few yards.

“Darya,” he called. “Darya.” There was no answer. “Boy.”

A Chinese servant came running up and Angus asked him where his mistress was. He did not know. He had not seen her since tiffin.

“Where can she be?” asked Munro, coming back, puzzled.

He went to the back of the house and shouted.

“She can’t have gone out. There’s nowhere to go. When did you see her last, Neil?”

“I went out collecting after tiffin. I’d had a rather unsatisfactory morning and I thought I’d try my luck again.”

“Strange.”

They hunted everywhere round the camp. Munro thought she might have made herself comfortable somewhere and gone to sleep.

“It’s too bad of her to frighten one like this.”

The whole party joined in the search. Munro began to grow alarmed.

“It’s not possible that she should have gone for a stroll in the jungle and lost her way. She’s never moved more than a hundred yards from the house to the best of my knowledge since we’ve been here.”

Neil saw the fear in Munro’s eyes and looked down.

“We’d better get everyone along and start hunting. There’s one thing, she can’t be far. She knows that if you get lost the best thing is to stay where you are and wait for people to come and find you. She’ll be scared out of her wits, poor thing.”

He called out the Dyak hunters and told the Chinese servants to bring lanterns. He fired his gun as a signal. They separated into two parties, one under Munro, the other under Neil, and went down the two rough paths that in the course of the month they had made in their comings and goings. It was arranged that whoever found Darya should fire three shots in quick succession. Neil walked with his face stern and set. His conscience was clear. He seemed to bear in his hands the decree of immanent justice. He knew that Darya would never be found. The two parties met. It was not necessary to look at Munro’s face. He was distracted. Neil felt like a surgeon who is forced to perform a dangerous operation without assistance or appliances to save the life of someone he loves. It behoved him to be firm.

“She could never have got so far as this,” said Munro. “We must go back and beat the jungle within the radius of a mile from the house inch by inch. The only explanation is that she was frightened by something or fainted or was stung by a snake.”

Neil did not answer. They started out again and, making lines, combed the undergrowth. They shouted. Every now and then they fired a gun and listened for a faint call in answer. Birds of the night flew with a whirring of wings, frightened, as they advanced with their lanterns; and now and then they half saw, half guessed at an animal, deer, boar, or rhino, that fled at their approach. The storm broke suddenly. A great wind blew and then the lightning rent the darkness, like a scream of a woman in pain, and the tortured flashes, quick, quick, one on the heels of the other, like demon dancers in a frantic reel, wriggled down the night. The horror of the forest was revealed in an unearthly day. The thunder crashed down the sky in huge rollers, peal upon peal, like vast, primeval waves dashing against the shores of eternity. That fearful din hurtled through space as though sound had size and weight. The rain pelted in fierce torrents. Rocks and gigantic trees came tumbling down the mountain. The tumult was awful. The Dyak hunters cowered, gibbering in terror of the angry spirits who spoke in the storm, but Munro urged them on. The rain fell all night, with lightning and thunder, and did not cease till dawn. Wet through and shivering they returned to the camp. They were exhausted. When they had eaten Munro meant to resume the desperate search. But he knew that it was hopeless. They would never see her alive again. He flung himself down wearily. His face was tired and white and anguished.

“Poor child. Poor child.”

THE END